Book 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.
Customer Reviews:
a bit too much at times.......2006-10-24
An entertaining book! Miller is probably the most cynical person in the universe. Only problem I had with the book is that this author rants on in a mystical sort of way every now and then, and then it spans a few pages at a time. I found these "rants" incomprehensible, I did not care for them.
Among Other Things.......2006-07-18
Out of idle curiosity and a desire to reread (third time) Miller's Tropic novels, I checked the consumer reviews of Tropic of CANCER first. I am interested in new generations discovering the stuff that I read going back to the early 60s. I found the reviews surprisingly dense, repeating the old cliches and personal prejudices.
Those of TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, on the other hand, are pointed and intelligent. Moreover, they recognize one of Miller's great traits--- humor. One reviewer pointed out the book's "hilarity", an apt characterization. Another emphasized Miller's description of the Cosmodemonic messenger service at which he worked. This is one of the most memorable sections of any book I have read: hilarious, biting satire, and (before Miller departs) a great New York book.
I have always thought Miller was, among other things, a parodist, and thus those who take him too literally (from Norman Mailer to the guy who showered after reading CANCER)are missing one of our outstanding writers, or certainly mistaking the author for the narrator.
The Inward Journey to the Self: The Importance of Miller's TROPIC OF CAPRICORN.......2005-08-05
"For there is only one great adventure and that is inward, toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor deeds even matter" (4).
Miller's two tropics - CANCER AND CAPRICORN- are essentially manuals for the creative life. They present Miller's transformation from lay-schmuck working in the belly of the beast that is the American economy - jobs such as his position with the Western Union Telegraph company, which he refers to as the "Cosmococcic / Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company" - to his evolution as en expatriate writer living in Paris. The books are really designed to be read together to magnify the metamorphosis, the rite of passage. While CANCER chronicles the latter portion of Miller's experience abroad, the prequel, CAPRICORN, written five years later in 1939, is the more developed and more seminal of the two and elucidates with much greater detail the affects of his epiphany.
Most artists will immediately recognize the struggle Miller endures. Married to the "wrong" woman and with a young child in tow - a relationship which he finds stifling to his creative development - Miller faces tenable employment situations to support this life. Those jobs he does find do little to allow him to prosper; rather he finds himself as a cog on a wheel of Hell. His transformation from the morass of what society deems sound and true is painful. Anyone who has ever made such sacrifices to pursue the unspoken dreams to create from what grows inside of them will sympathize with Miller's dilemma. To pursue a life of an artist is frightening enough: to do it behind the rancorous veil of the American dream is horrifying. Miller recognizes the banal existence of modern America with its machines, its backward corporate policies, its worship of the unthinking and mechanical and he also knows he must break from its fetters.
Part of Miller's disenchantment with America is organic to his being just as much as it is experiential. As a child, Miller feels a unique disassociation with his peers and even his family. This self-possessed knowledge of his unique intelligence leaves Miller with a feeling of disorientation. As an adolescent, he sees his drunken father convert to piety when wooed by the charisma of a local minister. Miller, Sr. then falls from grace when the minister is called to another location and as a result of this perceived abandonment, cycles back to his earlier state of crapulousness. The event seems to have intimated to Miller the importance of being self-reliant upon a constant wellspring of inspiration so that disappointment in other people does not interrupt the flow of creativity.
Miller describes the evolution of the artist as riding "on the ovarian trolley." In fact, those very words are what preface CAPRICORN. For Miller there are really two births the artist experiences before his final descent into a world riddled with isolation, hunger and anticipation. Of course, there is the physical birth but this is more a symbolic representation than Miller's actual recognition of his square-peg, round-hole emotional relationship with the world at large: this is the first stage of birth. The second stage comes years later out of the "Land of F@ck" as Miller coins it, the place where the "spermatozoon reigns supreme" (198). These phrases, as they would first seem (and were seen for many years that the book was banned from U.S. publication), are not some sordid and gratuitous account of Miller's perceptions of the world or his conquests. Rather, he uses the extended metaphors and kennings to give the reader an understanding to the visceral almost primordial conditions from whence the artist arises. For Miller, spiritual ascension is a process biologic as well as intellectual.
"Once this fact is grasped there can be no more despair. At the very bottom of the ladder, chez the spermatozoa, there is the same condition of bliss at the top, chez God. God is the summation of all the spermatozoa come to full consciousness. Between the bottom and the top there is no stop, no halfway station" (199).
There is an almost funereal quality about Miller's cognizance here: this idea of exploring one's complete "ANNIHILATON" before metaphysical resurrection. Miller understands the need for an eradication of the former self before the rebirth of the artist as he moves from the "terra firma" to the "terra vague." Along with this laying waste of the individual comes the erasure of connections to the self: friends, family, lovers - all abandoned to pursue the freedom to express unhindered utterance*. To this point, Miller's use of "Tropic of" in the titles of CANCER and CAPRICORN now begins to make more sense as he asserts himself to be on the boundary between this land of the physical and the spiritual; the place where men aspire to be God for a period of time just before the flash-point of creative impulse.
He brings the idea of the "ovarian trolley" full circle when he talks about the importance of discovering Dostoevsky - this being the first glimpse of a man's soul - and then later in a book called CREATIVE EVOLUTION by Henri Bergson. He carries the latter book with him everywhere and extols its virtue upon any man or woman who would hear the new standard version on the gospel of solitude.
TROPIC OF CAPRICORN should be standard reading for anyone in the arts, for any artist who has ever felt the pang of isolation, who truly believes in the necessity of sacrifice, a higher calling and commitment to one's creative endeavors. Miller's importance to world literature is vastly underrated and in many cases. Writers are simply too intimidated to face the truth in what he espouses. Miller operates as an Overman and as such, it is right that he should pose a certain condition of tremulousness in his readership: he has forged his own society, he has forged his own being into something closer to what history had intended for him since his first phone call into the horn of the fallopian. This is discomfiting for most and is intended to show how the application of introspection for an artist can lead to becoming an acolyte of unconventional philosophy: how a writer emerges as "e pluribus unum." Henry Miller's doctrine is reserved for the initiate, the mad few who choose separation from the masses as a means for creative growth. Miller's epitaph should simply be, "My name? Why just call me God - God the embryo."
© 2005-06 Edward J. Carvalho
NOTES:
* A phrase I have incorporated from listening to many extemporaneous speeches of creative rebellion from Squawk Coffeehouse co-founder, Lee Kidd.
WORKS CITED:
1.Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
Capricorn: Beyond Cancer.......2005-04-13
Tropic of Capricorn is perhaps the gretest book I have ever read. I read Tropic of Cancer first, and was interested and intrigued by it, but not until I read Capricorn would I truly call Miller one of the greatest American writers. Also banned from the U.S for 30 years, Capricorn goes beyong the sexuality and bitterness of one who has given up and lived for themselves as Cancer outlines autobiographically of Miller's days in Paris. In Capricorn Miller looks to the roots of his childhood and life in New York and examines what made him the man he is and brought on his great change to a new way of life. It has elements similar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, which may be its greatest moments, as it tells small "grotesque" character studies of the people that shaped his life. Miller combines ideas of Eastern mysticism with the chaos of an ever industrializing world. Capricorn goes beyond linear writing to pursue a dreamlike atmosphere: one of admitted Surrealist and Dadaist influence, whose influence in turn can be seen in the later beat writing of Kerouac and Burroughs among others.
A Bible To those With Ears To Hear.......2005-02-19
Tropic Of Capricorn is certainly not for everyone. The first time I read it I was quite put off by it. But years later I was drawn to read it again and suddenly found it full of meaning.
Most people speak of it as a book about sex, but really it's a book about spiritual awakening. It is not an easy read. It holds your face in the mud and asks you to see God. It's a book that makes you feel experiences, it wears you down, and then takes you into moments of satori.
Book Description
Henry Miller's collaboration with the Obelisk press in the 1930s produced three phenomenal works still much-loved to this day. The groundbreaking Tropic of Cancer published by Jack Kahane in 1934 after Anais Nin helped cover costs, its followup Tropic of Capricorn, finally printed in 1939, and Black Spring, a collection of vignettes and tales from 1936. These three works, later republished by the Olympia Press in Paris announced the arrival of a bold, pugilistic, voice on the literary scene, one whose artistic roar echos to this day.
Download Description
Henry Miller's collaboration with the Obelisk press in the 1930s produced three phenomenal works still much-loved to this day. The groundbreaking Tropic of Cancer published by Jack Kahane in 1934 after Anais Nin helped cover costs, its followup Tropic of Capricorn, finally printed in 1939, and Black Spring, a collection of vignettes and tales from 1936. These three works, later republished by the Olympia Press in Paris announced the arrival of a bold, pugilistic, voice on the literary scene, one whose artistic roar echos to this day.
Customer Reviews:
Get The Revised Edition.......2005-04-19
Took a chance on the ebook, as the title is ridiculously cheap.
Message at the front says "Revised, March 2005"--so if you're getting it from a marketplace seller or something, be sure they have the right version.
I can remember first picking up a paperbound trilogy by Mr. Miller some 20 years, an old Grove PB from the '60s. Loved it, and it keeps speaking to me to this very day.
Four stars because the text is marked up in the French manner, and it can be a little hard to deal with all the angle quotes and such.
Did buy the paperback as well, and love carrying all three around with me.
Wonderful Read--Publisher needs a copyeditor.......2005-02-12
The collection of three of Miller's greatest works in volume looked too good to be true. It was. Miller's great, brusque voice is here, but the production quality of the volume is very low. The text contains far too many errors, as if it were transcribed with no proofread prior to press. Buy another edition from a more reputable company.
Average customer rating:
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Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn: Boxed Set
Henry Miller
Manufacturer: Grove Press
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ASIN: 0802138438 |
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Forty years have passed since Grove Press first published Henry Miller's landmark masterpiece -- an act that would forever change the face of American literature. Initially banned in America as obscene, Tropic of Cancer was first published in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards permitted its publication. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century." Also banned in America for almost thirty years, Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature. Together, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are a lasting testament to one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century and his contribution not only to literature but to the cause of free speech.
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Tropico De Capricornio/tropic of Capricorn (Punto De Lectura)
Henry Miller
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ASIN: 8466309063 |
Amazon.com
Oprah Book Club® Selection, August 2000: The narrator of Elizabeth Berg's Open House calls divorce "a series of internal earthquakes ... one after the other." She ought to know. Samantha is abandoned by her husband in the opening pages of this three-handkerchief special, and the resultant tremors keep her off-balance for most of the novel. There are practical problems aplenty, of course, including a shortage of money and an 11-year-old son to raise. But Sam's sense of emotional bereavement is far worse, despite the fact that her husband had been giving her the conjugal cold shoulder for years:
I miss David so much, yes I do, I miss the presence of another person in my bed at night, even if he doesn't touch me; the reliability of someone else being there in the morning, even if they only shave and stare straight ahead into the mirror while you lean against the bathroom doorjamb with your cup of coffee, chatting hopefully.
The loneliness in her "as constant and as irrefutable" as circulating blood, Sam begins to rebuild her life. She finds herself a job and takes in a couple of boarders to help meet her mortgage payments. (One of them, a depressed student named Lavender Blue, informs her that "life was nothing but one major disappointment after the other"--the sort of homily that Sam is understandably reluctant to hear these days.) She also starts dating, with disastrous results. Yet this comically kvetching heroine does manage to find love in the ruins, and by the time Open House winds down, it's hard not to believe that she's much better off. Throughout, Berg alternates her snappy and sappy registers like a real pro. And the conclusion, which most readers will be able to spot a mile off, seems just right--the light at the end of the post-matrimonial tunnel. --Anita Urquhart
Book Description
In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember--and reclaim--the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.
From the Hardcover edition.
Download Description
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in borders.
The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember -- and reclaim -- the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage.
Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman -- and within a woman herself.
Customer Reviews:
A quietly moving story about the shattering of an ordinary life.......2007-06-12
Sam's world is turned upside down when her husband abruptly announces that he wants to leave. Since *she* was perfectly happy, being a stay-at-home wife and mother, Sam never imagined that David could possibly feel differently.
Once he's gone, Sam begins to experience a series of tiny internal breakdowns. As she's wondering what on earth to do next, one thing is for sure -- she's going to be the best mom she possibly can be to her 11-year-old son Travis.
But what happens when Travis says he'd prefer living with his father? And if his dad makes excuses not to have him?
Above all, how will Sam make it financially, living alone in a huge old house? She'll take roommates, that's how...and thus a series of unique characters sweep into the Morrows' lives.
Even if you haven't experienced divorce personally, chances are you'll relate to Sam anyways...because who hasn't experienced some sort of loss that devastates to the core? Through it all, Sam's voice remains consistent; even when horribly defeated and depressed, readers can't help feeling that Sam's life will turn out fine.
Good Book.......2007-05-12
This was a pretty good book,you really connect with the main character. It's sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and sometimes leaves you saying " you go girl!"
Open House.......2007-04-12
This book was good nothing to special about it. Very easy reading. Overall I did enjoy reading it but it wasn't like I couldn't put it down. Its a cute story of how a woman gets through and overcomes a divorce. It describes how she handles this situation with her 11 yr old son while inviting "strangers" to stay in her house and pay rent. I loved the ending, it was realisitc. I don't want to give it away though. :-) I recommend it to a women who is going through a rough realtionship.
Amazing contemporary characters .......2007-03-20
Elizabeth Berg crafts a beautiful novel with amazing characters. The audio version of this book adds a flair to the characters. I am pleased to report that I am looking foward to the rest of her work in the near future. Ms. Berg takes you through the pains and pangs of a sudden divorce, and the joy of finding true unconditional love. If you cant recognize any of these human qualities in this novel, clearly how are you going to recognize them in real life?.
Open house.......2007-02-25
This is another of those books for me that was very "middle of the road". It was not terrible and it was not great. It was a bit slow for my tastes and the characters were very ordinary.
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Bleak House (Open Guides to Literature)
Pam Morris
Manufacturer: Open Univ Pr
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Binding: Hardcover
19th Century
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ASIN: 033509029X |
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Open House ; A Novel
Chuck Corwin
Manufacturer: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (ISPCK)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 8172149212 |
Book Description
When Inspector Appleby's car breaks down on a deserted road one dark night, he happens upon an imposing mansion, whose windows are all illuminated. His sense of curiosity gets the better of him when he discovers that the front door is wide open, and he gets a funny feeling of being watched as he wanders round this splendid house, looking for signs of life. When he finds an elaborate feast laid out, he wonders who is expected...
Customer Reviews:
Allusive, melodramatic English Manor mystery.......2004-04-03
"The Open House" (1972) is one of my favorite Sir John Appleby mysteries--a slightly hallucinatory murder mystery set in what at first appears to be a fully furnished, but abandoned English manor. When Sir John stumbles across the house after his car breaks down in the middle of a very dark night, its front doors are open wide, all of the lights are on, and there is a cold collation set out in the dining room, along with a bottle of champagne on ice. In the bedroom, there is even a hot water bottle tucked under the bedclothes--and it is still warm.
Sir John, retired Assistant Commissioner of New Scotland Yard, can't help feeling like Goldilocks in 'The Three Bears' when no one answers his shouted requests for assistance.
Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart) has been compared to James in his use of allusion and his exquisitely drawn characterizations, done mainly through dialogue. Also Jamesian is his loving, detailed description of Ledward Park. With all of the description and dialogue, you might assume there isn't much action but Appleby, in spite of his claims to be elderly involves himself in a couple of rousing chases and fights, one in an octagonal room that is completely lined with mirrors.
The plot is complicated by two sets of villains, but Sir John sorts everything out with his usual élan. South American politics, a multitude of heirs, an outrageous butler, and a false marriage, plus two accidental pummelings of a perfectly blameless rector are explained away by breakfast. In fact, Sir John toddles off with the rector, whom he had twice mistaken for a villain, and clarifies ALL in the best tradition of British Golden Age mysteries.
If you are a already a fan of Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, or Dorothy Sayers, you definitely need to add Michael Innes's mysteries to your reading list. "The Open House" is perfect in its class, and you will also learn quite a bit about Carolingian architecture.
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Open house: A novel
Joan Kahn
Manufacturer: J.B. Lippincott company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007FA2OW |
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Where do you think you are? Alice Munro's open houses.: An article from: Mosaic (Winnipeg)
Robert McGill
Manufacturer: University of Manitoba, Mosaic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B0008G00D8
Release Date: 2005-07-30 |
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This digital document is an article from Mosaic (Winnipeg), published by University of Manitoba, Mosaic on December 1, 2002. The length of the article is 7819 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Where do you think you are? Alice Munro's open houses.
Author: Robert McGill
Publication:
Mosaic (Winnipeg) (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2002
Publisher: University of Manitoba, Mosaic
Volume: 35
Issue: 4
Page: 103(17)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Books:
- Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly (The Penguin American Library)
- A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier
- Ailey Spirit: The Journey of an American Dance Company
- Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
- Animal Farm and 1984
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth (Library of America)
- Art in China (Oxford History of Art)
- Art in the Hellenistic Age
- Bhagavad-Gita:: The Song of God
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Di
- Master of Dragons
- Erläuterungen und Synonymliste: Austauschlieferung
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- Mountain Islands and Desert Seas
- Learning Disabilities and Your Child: A Survival Handbook
- Significant Others: Creativity & Intimate Partnership
- Guide to Women's Art Organizations and Directory for the Arts: Multi-Arts Centers, Organizations, Ga
- Identification Methods In Applied And Environmental Microbiology
Tropic of Cancer
Black Spring
Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I
Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)
Plexus: The Rosy Crucifixion II
