He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism.His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961).He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors. Henry Valentine Miller (Decem– June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, “one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century.” Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934.

I can't overlook the fact that they are both dicks.Henry Miller’s famously banned book is “a matter-of-fact celebration of chucking one’s dreary life and following your heart to Paris” (Richard Price). I could overlook Miller being a man of the 1920's just like I could overlook Rose's betting on games. I won't be re-reading any Henry Miller just like I won't be rooting for Pete Rose to make the Hall of Fame. But in the end, Henry Miller is like Pete Rose, no matter how good and 'modern' his writing was= he doesn't make it into the Hall of Fame because he was not only sexist, but probably a woman hater. I can see how he influenced my writing style even to this day- some stream of consciousness and surrealistic imagery along with a heavy use of commas and semi colons to enhance paragraphs to a couple of pages with lists, asides and what not. Sexually explicit, these books electrified the European literary avant-garde and were almost universally banned outside France.

It was followed five years later by its sister volume Tropic of Capricorn. So how does this hold up to me 50 years later? If you could cut out the misogany and ignorant racism, Henry Miller did cut a unique figure in English literature. His first published book, Tropic of Cancer appeared in 1934 published by the Obelisk Press in Paris. He was also and man of his times sexist and racist. They included authors like Nabakov, Anais Nin, Alan Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Marquis De Sade and others- but Henry Miller was the star of their universe to me.Īnd why not? His books were full of 'sex' and the kind of writing that revolutionized English literature along with the rest of the Grove Press crew. I was big into the Grove Press books in my late teens and early twenties.

Tropic of cancer and capricorn books