Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

Overwhelmingly, studiedly joyous

pp. 318

Published: Flamingo, 1993 (originally published 1934)

A wondrous study of life and living, Tropic of Cancer is a picaresque tale about a man living by his principles. Having dropped a comfortable white collar job in America and moved to Paris to pursue his literary ambitions, the first person narrator is determined to be faithful to a life of passion, creativity and bliss. This is his freedom, the squalor and degradation included.

   

There are many other novels of this kind, focusing on the bohemian scene of Paris, the literary capital for modern literature, and the writer’s struggle – most notably Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. And there are even novels based wholly on poverty and the struggle to continue existing – such as Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. But Miller’s novel attains something rather different and much more rewarding for the reader than these realist depictions of suffering. He frequently follows his imagery into long, surrealistic ruminations on humanity, art and existence, overflowing with poetic energy. He penetrates deeper into the complexities of his life’s philosophy by weaving his beautiful rants with the story, and of course this works immensely at diversifying the piece.

   

Miller’s first-published novel is overwhelmingly, studiedly joyous. Broadly speaking, it follows an arc where on the opening page ‘the hero … is Timelessness’, and where at the close the contradictory realisation is struck upon that ‘more than anything [people] need to be surrounded by sufficient space – space even more than time.’ The narrator is talking about freedom in these two passages, one idea being that utter freedom is a life without the limits of time, which is a completely theoretical and unattainable object, thus keeping us in ‘a lock step, toward the prison of death’. And yet the other passage, gleaned from experience, is an understanding that one can live freely under the inevitability of death, but that one requires space – environmental, emotional, psychological space. In other words, freedom is achievable. And of course, this is where the joy of Henry Miller lies. That our main character has suffered many torments through the course of his story – the ignominy of begging for food and money, the anguish and the loneliness of creative endeavour, the cruelty of some people  –  and who then towels himself off at the other end with such an optimistic outlook as that is well and truly astounding. What a marvellous lesson to the pessimistic masses!

And, of course, we cannot ignore the kindness, the charity, the beauty he finds amongst the ugliness of his personal freedom. The novel isn’t a catalogue of torment until the end where the narrator finds salvation in his world view, but in fact it is often the opposite. It is a love letter that contradicts itself often, a dance in the muck of existence, a series of gorgeous life-affirming vignettes that are all the more absorbing when we see that they are in fact Henry Miller’s views entirely. Most of his output during his lifetime was semi-autobiographical, Tropic of Cancer being the first of his forays into this exciting new form he developed. His books are like kisses blown into the literary consciousness, kisses which come directly and breathtakingly from the author’s own lips.

Tropic of Cancer’s reputation will always precede it. It is a very sensual novel where the narrator’s sexual encounters, mouth-wateringly candid, caused it to be the victim of a large-scale ban in the United States and in England, as well as an obscenity trial which Miller eventually won. Needless to say, though, the proliferation of sex is nothing but a glaring affirmation of the joy, the lust, the love, the honesty, the purity, the ugliness, the baselessness, the beauty, the loneliness, the exuberance that can be encountered in a life worth living.