Some time during the winter of last year, I found myself browsing the books section of Amazon.com. If you’re unfamiliar with the website, they have feature a section toward the bottom of each page titled “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought . . .” and then list a series of recommendations based on whatever item you’re currently looking at. I can no longer remember what my original search stemmed from – it might have been Kerouac’s On the Road – but while going through a succession of suggestions based on whatever search it was, I came across Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Included in the page’s description of the work, published in 1934 in Paris, was the fact that the book had been banned in the United States for nearly thirty years; it wasn’t until 1964 in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that Tropic of Cancer was published in the U.S. This factoid immediately grabbed my interest. What about a book could be so offensive, so graphic, that a country would forbid its entire population from ever reading it?
Instead of waiting the day or two it would take for shipping to bring the book to my front door, I jumped into my car and sped to the nearest Barnes & Noble. Luckily they had a copy of Tropic of Cancer in stock – I wasn’t sure what to think, though, when the cashier said to me upon seeing my purchase, “Don’t drink and read this book.” So, after arriving back at home, I conscientiously filled up a glass of water before turning to the first page of Tropic of Cancer. On the second page, I encountered Miller’s description of his own work:
“This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse…”
So this was the sort of offensiveness that garnered Miller such notoriety. The rest of the book goes on to chronicle his drinking, his carousing, his sexual encounters, and his apathy for his own situation in Paris.
If you haven’t read Tropic of Cancer, I would highly recommend it. Miller was deeply dissatisfied with the ennui he perceived around him, particularly in America. I believe he wrote Tropic of Cancer in an attempt to cut through the disillusionment of his age – whether or not his reader finds themself breaking into laughter or completely horrified, the polarizing nature of Miller’s book ensures that it will elicit some form of response, a break in the monotony of pursuing the “American dream.” Though it’s been over 70 years since the writing of the work and over 40 since its publication in America, I still consider Tropic of Cancer to be a very worthwhile read – at the very least it provides a perspective into an important chapter of the fight for freedom of the press.
