Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Grove Press (1963), Paperback, 348 pages
Description
Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, The Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.
User reviews
LibraryThing member copyedit52
I thought this was Miller's best ... until, two-thirds of the way through, when he began rhapsodizing about world history and overindulged in philosophy. Much as I like Miller, it's clear that deep thinking was never his strong suit.
Having been guided by Miller to other writers--Celine, Knut
Having been guided by Miller to other writers--Celine, Knut
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Hamsun, Anais Nin, Blaise Cendrars--as well as the art historian Elie Faure, he turned me on to Oswald Spengler. I spent a year reading and rereading Decline of the West, and even wrote an essay about it. In similar fashion, it seems to me that it was Spengler's influence that undid Capricorn--a case of admiration and imitation interfering with what Henry Miller does best: presenting an adventurous yet often everyday life in flowing, literate detail. As a result, what began as a great book became a very good one. Show Less
LibraryThing member poplin
Declaring yourself a genius is fine, but at least provide some evidence of it. Miller is misogynistic (and generally misanthropic), abusive, rude and arrogant. Although I don't think any book should be banned, this one was no great loss.
LibraryThing member endersreads
I find it amusing that so many postmodernists feel that Henry Miller was a no-talent bum. They complain of Miller's use of the word "cunt" as well as his other expletives, saying they are not used creatively, such as Hollywood uses them today. They say his descriptions of sexual intercourse are
"Tropic of Capricorn" reflected the world beautifully in the first hundred pages or so. I was fascinated by Miller's job, the way in which he acquired it, his co-workers, and most of all the people he dealt with day to day.
By Miller not giving us pure autobiographies of "the truth and the only the truth", Miller succeeds in giving us an excess of truth. There is an underlying thread in all of his musings; what Robert Anton Wilson called i², e..g., intelligence which is perceiving of itself, knowing itself as unique, perceiving, and capable of creation.
Miller is the type of guy my dad would probably says sits under trees all day. Miller is quite honest in telling us he is this type of guy. What is amazing in "Tropic of Capricorn" is not all the cunts and such, but the explanation by Miller of Miller. He is self-redeeming in this. This is why Henry Miller's writing gets bad reviews—he pisses people off with too clear of meaningful meaningless BS.
As for those people who say that Miller is a lousy writer, George Orwell had this to say of Henry:
"Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."
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dull, lifeless. They say so much more that reflects their own easy cynicism and allegiance to the lowly pissing jackals known as critics. "Tropic of Capricorn" reflected the world beautifully in the first hundred pages or so. I was fascinated by Miller's job, the way in which he acquired it, his co-workers, and most of all the people he dealt with day to day.
By Miller not giving us pure autobiographies of "the truth and the only the truth", Miller succeeds in giving us an excess of truth. There is an underlying thread in all of his musings; what Robert Anton Wilson called i², e..g., intelligence which is perceiving of itself, knowing itself as unique, perceiving, and capable of creation.
Miller is the type of guy my dad would probably says sits under trees all day. Miller is quite honest in telling us he is this type of guy. What is amazing in "Tropic of Capricorn" is not all the cunts and such, but the explanation by Miller of Miller. He is self-redeeming in this. This is why Henry Miller's writing gets bad reviews—he pisses people off with too clear of meaningful meaningless BS.
As for those people who say that Miller is a lousy writer, George Orwell had this to say of Henry:
"Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."
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LibraryThing member LadyBlossom
I think that this book may have caused a stir in 1938, I found it hard to read, not shocking and over all a struggle to keep turning pages.
LibraryThing member amerynth
There were parts of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" that were absolutely brilliant (such as his detailed description of his days working for a telegram company) and parts that were extremely disturbing (particularly the rape of an Egyptian woman that Miller gleefully recalls as a great time.)
In this novel, Miller basically sets out to describe his early sexual escapades and his disillusionment with his marriage and American values, which eventually pushes him to become an ex-pat in Paris.
I can definitely see the influence this book had on other writers (especially in the Beatnik circle,) but it was a struggle to read as Miller treats nearly everyone in his world like garbage. I definitely thought "Tropic of Cancer" was the better novel of the pair.
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In this novel, Miller basically sets out to describe his early sexual escapades and his disillusionment with his marriage and American values, which eventually pushes him to become an ex-pat in Paris.
I can definitely see the influence this book had on other writers (especially in the Beatnik circle,) but it was a struggle to read as Miller treats nearly everyone in his world like garbage. I definitely thought "Tropic of Cancer" was the better novel of the pair.
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LibraryThing member cataryna
Henry Miller's depravity , coarseness and ability to confuse the hell out of you definitely was not lacking in this novel but the difference between my reading of Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer was that with Cancer I felt there was an actual plot and at the end I actually got it if you
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know what I mean. With Capricorn I had a difficult time staying on track and felt like there was absolutely no flow. While there were still many "wow that was deep!" moments, the senseless meanderings from one topic to a totally different topic mid-paragraph threw me off quite a lot and I found myself having to reread passages that I didn't have to do with ToCancer. I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. Show Less
LibraryThing member adaorhell
a bunch of dog vomit
LibraryThing member Fledgist
Erotic novel that, to a degree, sets a standard for the sub-genre.
LibraryThing member sailornate82
I think Miller is a very poignant and articulate writer. I read "Cancer" a while ago and remember enjoying it more than Capricorn. Although there are truly wonderful observations about life in 1930's New York, the stream-of-conscious narration proved to be too much for me this time around. At about
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the 208-page mark, I'm putting it back on the shelf. Show Less
LibraryThing member sailornate82
I think Miller is a very poignant and articulate writer. I read "Cancer" a while ago and remember enjoying it more than Capricorn. Although there are truly wonderful observations about life in 1930's New York, the stream-of-conscious narration proved to be too much for me this time around. At about
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the 208-page mark, I'm putting it back on the shelf. Show Less
LibraryThing member angela.vaughn
I have been reading Miller's books in spurts, and I can say that although I am not a real fan of his writtings, the story that is put before you and also implied, is nothing short of enthrolling. He has a very crude way of looking at the world, but I find that it is almost expected from him. The
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way he tries to objectify women is, in my eye, a sad attempt at protecting his heart from getting broken by another woman. Although I liked the book as a whole, he could, as usual get a little long winded. Show Less
LibraryThing member poetontheone
It's been more than two years since I've read Cancer, but that work impressed itself upon me to the degree where I can still declare today that this is its equal, at the very least. This is very much the reverse of the same coin, pulling us back from the hero's Parisian days to his genesis, his
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childhood and his early adulthood, when Miller was building Miller, as he so eloquently illustrates and flat out proclaims at one point. The feverish ruminations here stretch a little longer than usual for him, and these fruits are sweet and rotten in equal parts, the lesser of them not marring the work as a whole. Aside from these two components, this volume seems to contain more explicit sex than Cancer, though even these passages are humorous or illuminating in their own way. Less of a plot than Cancer, similar in a way to Black Spring. At times Capricorn is more illuminating, and dare I say more fun, than either. Show Less
LibraryThing member otikhonova
10 out of 5 scale rating :)
LibraryThing member DuneSherban
Miller’s Capricorn is a strange and scruffy, albeit extraordinarily beautiful and lilting work. The novel, which blurs over into autobiography and poetry, represents the tangled flux of emotions, sentiments, actions and interactions that flow around the young Henry Miller – a disgruntled postal
Miller’s novel is brazen, shocking and profound. The narrator undergoes something like a schizophrenic transfer from brutal disgust at the world around him to unapologetic love (and returns again, of course). At once he wants to bring the stale morals of America, its hypocrisy and indifference down to the ground. And at the same time he is captured by his own moral code, his own desire to be, to understand, to grow.
The narrator is then a difficult figure; at times he is simple and likeable, a witty guide through the streets of Brooklyn. On the other hand he can be distasteful and cruel.
To say that CAPRICORN is directionless would be inaccurate. It does have a motion, but more like the flow of an ocean than a road. The tone and tense, the present of the novel, change throughout, in a sense ramping up the speed, the delirium, the significance. At the beginning of the novel we can rather easily follow Henry – his workmates, his lovers, his job. As the work presses on, however, Henry shifts back and forth in time from childhood to the present, revisiting people, reimagining people. At some moments his narrative is stable – for example, a thorough examination, a turning inside out, of his father’s late-life finding of God. In another moment it is a Proust-like memory brought forth by the smell and taste of sourdough bread.
As the text wears on, however, the stability of characters becomes dislodged; mystical, unreal elements of personalities share the page with real people. Symbols come alive. In the most hectic, grandiloquent passages at the centre of the book (Miller’s “intermission”), the narrator invokes an elaborate sea of metaphors and images around a woman, almost Woman in general, who is both real and unreal, a gentle lover as well as a vulture eating his flesh, a woman his age but also a timeless beauty, literally stretching across eternity. In these sections of the book you very much lose your anchorage to normality, but you can just about hold on. Miller dazzles with fine, witty, eloquent, beautiful imagery. If nothing else the linguistic, the sound sense of it all is an incredible experience, really pushing text and the human voice to its limits (I guess in the way that Scat music makes use of the voice as an instrument, or screamo does the same with grunting and shouting). Miller’s narrator is, after all, an aspiring writer. The problem, he says, is not the lack of theme but the sense that he simply can’t “shut off” his flow of ideas and images.
And besides all of the arrogance and swagger and abstraction, there is an honest gut in there. Miller appears profoundly drawn to and fascinated by the people around him – he feels free both to damn them and help them in the same sentence, seeing them almost as whole-selves rather than parts of selves (even if he does paradoxically use metonyms, single images, to refer to whole people). In other words, he sees everything; he sees people’s goodness as well as their strangeness, their shame, their arrogance, their badness. He sees a continuum, and this continuum is what really constitutes people – real people living real, flawed lives always on the edge of understanding.
The faults you might lay at the novel are the way in which abstraction can scupper its purpose. Or perhaps we should ask what that purpose was in the first place – what does this young, insightful and intelligent but hopelessly troubled narrator want in live, and what is Miller telling us? Other readers have said that if you look at Capricorn as one of a stack of books about anomie, about existentialism, then there’s less purpose and clarity than, say, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, or perhaps the straight forwardness of a Kerouac. At the same time, what you’ve got here is undifferentiated human nature, the raw nerves and bones and organs of humanity laid out. It seems a little trite to say the meaning and purpose are contained in its meaninglessness and lack of purpose, but maybe that isn’t so far from the truth.
At the end of it all you can take it or leave it – some love Miller’s verbosity, his swagger, his wit. Others think him brutal and crude and artless. I think he’s simply, in a very flawed and very human way, trying to be honest. At times, this book elevates and humbles and opens the mind in a way that I’ve never experienced before. At others it leaves you cold and rotten. But it is beyond doubt a powerful, unforgettable experience.
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employee in a New York of the 1930s and 40s.Miller’s novel is brazen, shocking and profound. The narrator undergoes something like a schizophrenic transfer from brutal disgust at the world around him to unapologetic love (and returns again, of course). At once he wants to bring the stale morals of America, its hypocrisy and indifference down to the ground. And at the same time he is captured by his own moral code, his own desire to be, to understand, to grow.
The narrator is then a difficult figure; at times he is simple and likeable, a witty guide through the streets of Brooklyn. On the other hand he can be distasteful and cruel.
To say that CAPRICORN is directionless would be inaccurate. It does have a motion, but more like the flow of an ocean than a road. The tone and tense, the present of the novel, change throughout, in a sense ramping up the speed, the delirium, the significance. At the beginning of the novel we can rather easily follow Henry – his workmates, his lovers, his job. As the work presses on, however, Henry shifts back and forth in time from childhood to the present, revisiting people, reimagining people. At some moments his narrative is stable – for example, a thorough examination, a turning inside out, of his father’s late-life finding of God. In another moment it is a Proust-like memory brought forth by the smell and taste of sourdough bread.
As the text wears on, however, the stability of characters becomes dislodged; mystical, unreal elements of personalities share the page with real people. Symbols come alive. In the most hectic, grandiloquent passages at the centre of the book (Miller’s “intermission”), the narrator invokes an elaborate sea of metaphors and images around a woman, almost Woman in general, who is both real and unreal, a gentle lover as well as a vulture eating his flesh, a woman his age but also a timeless beauty, literally stretching across eternity. In these sections of the book you very much lose your anchorage to normality, but you can just about hold on. Miller dazzles with fine, witty, eloquent, beautiful imagery. If nothing else the linguistic, the sound sense of it all is an incredible experience, really pushing text and the human voice to its limits (I guess in the way that Scat music makes use of the voice as an instrument, or screamo does the same with grunting and shouting). Miller’s narrator is, after all, an aspiring writer. The problem, he says, is not the lack of theme but the sense that he simply can’t “shut off” his flow of ideas and images.
And besides all of the arrogance and swagger and abstraction, there is an honest gut in there. Miller appears profoundly drawn to and fascinated by the people around him – he feels free both to damn them and help them in the same sentence, seeing them almost as whole-selves rather than parts of selves (even if he does paradoxically use metonyms, single images, to refer to whole people). In other words, he sees everything; he sees people’s goodness as well as their strangeness, their shame, their arrogance, their badness. He sees a continuum, and this continuum is what really constitutes people – real people living real, flawed lives always on the edge of understanding.
The faults you might lay at the novel are the way in which abstraction can scupper its purpose. Or perhaps we should ask what that purpose was in the first place – what does this young, insightful and intelligent but hopelessly troubled narrator want in live, and what is Miller telling us? Other readers have said that if you look at Capricorn as one of a stack of books about anomie, about existentialism, then there’s less purpose and clarity than, say, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, or perhaps the straight forwardness of a Kerouac. At the same time, what you’ve got here is undifferentiated human nature, the raw nerves and bones and organs of humanity laid out. It seems a little trite to say the meaning and purpose are contained in its meaninglessness and lack of purpose, but maybe that isn’t so far from the truth.
At the end of it all you can take it or leave it – some love Miller’s verbosity, his swagger, his wit. Others think him brutal and crude and artless. I think he’s simply, in a very flawed and very human way, trying to be honest. At times, this book elevates and humbles and opens the mind in a way that I’ve never experienced before. At others it leaves you cold and rotten. But it is beyond doubt a powerful, unforgettable experience.
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LibraryThing member hbergander
Includes the most interesting autobiographic details of Henry Miller’s becoming a writer. From his period as a staff executive at Western Union Telegraph Company to the years in Paris. In the sixties, when I learned the book trade, this title was under lock and key because of its explicit sexual
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language. In a place called “Schweinkram-Vitrine” (smut cabinet). Today, beyond the many sophisticated perversions described in contemporaneous literature, Henry Miller’s protagonists making love appear somehow stuffy and greatly normal. Show Less
LibraryThing member Salmondaze
It may be a companion piece to Tropic of Cancer, but make no mistake, This tantalizingly titled Tropic of Capricorn contains none of the engine of genius that drove its superior predecessor and caused me to rave that Henry Miller was like the reincarnation of Walt Whitman. Gone also is the humor
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that helped drive that book further home, and in its place lies inconsistent prose that never reaches Cancer's heights at its best and lapses into banality at its worst. In fact with this book, I rescind my comments that Henry Miller is the reincarnation of Walt Whitman. Here he looks a lot more like Jack Kerouac, a typist rather than an actual writer. Delve if you must, but beware of fetching titles: This is a beater with a new paint job. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheEllieMo
Yes, yes, I know; this is a classic, one of the 1001 books to read before you die, Henry Miller is a genius blah blah blah. But, my God, this was dull!! Either I'm just not intellectual enough to 'get' Miller (though I enjoyed Tropic of Cancer), or the people who pronounced this a classic wanted to
Tropic of Capricorn starts off well. Miller comes across as a strangely self-aware narcissist, full of himself but also aware of his own shortcomings. He considers himself well-liked in his circles, though the character as written is, to me, wholly unlikeable. But the stories he tells, and the way he tells them, are good. The tales of his life at Western Union make for interesting, sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking, reading.
But halfway through, we move from the autobiographical tone to abstract, stream-of-consciousness stuff, which I have to say, I found thoroughly dull. It's like he's run out of interesting things to say about his life so thought he'd pad out the book with the contents of his alcohol-fuelled dreams. Some may find that style of writing a good read. But it's not for me.
So, having read both Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, my experience of Henry Miller is now at an end.
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be perceived as intellectuals.Tropic of Capricorn starts off well. Miller comes across as a strangely self-aware narcissist, full of himself but also aware of his own shortcomings. He considers himself well-liked in his circles, though the character as written is, to me, wholly unlikeable. But the stories he tells, and the way he tells them, are good. The tales of his life at Western Union make for interesting, sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking, reading.
But halfway through, we move from the autobiographical tone to abstract, stream-of-consciousness stuff, which I have to say, I found thoroughly dull. It's like he's run out of interesting things to say about his life so thought he'd pad out the book with the contents of his alcohol-fuelled dreams. Some may find that style of writing a good read. But it's not for me.
So, having read both Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, my experience of Henry Miller is now at an end.
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LibraryThing member Ghost_Boy
I liked Tropic of the Cancer better. This one started out well and end well, just the middle got a little overwhelming for me. There is no plot with this book at all, just the middle part he started talking about all these various women he's had sex with and it was something I really didn't care
Unlike Cancer, Capricorn is set in New York City rather than Paris. Both books however focus on his inner thoughts towards various topics. These books are usually classified as erotica and yes the sex and langue can get very offensive. However, if you look at the soul of the book rather then the skin you will see why so many people, like me, have fallen in love with Miller's prose. This man could right some badass prose!
If you ever do decided to read Miller's Tropics (that is if you don't mind colorful offensive slang and graphic sex scenes) I suggest you read Cancer first. There really isn't an order to these books and you can read either one first, but makes more sense if you read them in order he published them. I rally like Miller's style, but he's definitely an acquired taste.
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about. The beginning and the end however have a ton of inspiring quotes and material though. You get more of Miller's philosophy in this book.Unlike Cancer, Capricorn is set in New York City rather than Paris. Both books however focus on his inner thoughts towards various topics. These books are usually classified as erotica and yes the sex and langue can get very offensive. However, if you look at the soul of the book rather then the skin you will see why so many people, like me, have fallen in love with Miller's prose. This man could right some badass prose!
If you ever do decided to read Miller's Tropics (that is if you don't mind colorful offensive slang and graphic sex scenes) I suggest you read Cancer first. There really isn't an order to these books and you can read either one first, but makes more sense if you read them in order he published them. I rally like Miller's style, but he's definitely an acquired taste.
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LibraryThing member AliceAnna
This book went from a sexual romp to mental masturbation. Very self-indulgent. I didn't care about Henry Miller before I read this and now I care even less. If everyone had his philosophy, the world would devolve into total anarchy. He simply didn't care about anyone or anything but himself and how
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he could manipulate those around him to get what he wanted. What a pig. Show Less
LibraryThing member Michael_Lilly
A stream of narrative instead of stream of consciousness. It doesn't work for me. I found it tedious and self-absorbed instead of insightful. His writing is often trite instead of clever. No doubt his sexual episodes were revolutionary at the time. Now they seem routine and misogynistic; even
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reminiscent of the ravings of Trump. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1939
Physical description
348 p.; 6.9 inches
ISBN
0394172957 / 9780394172958