Tropic of Capricorn - Softcover

Henry Miller

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007204450 ISBN 13: 9780007204458

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2005

Synopsis

The controversial, erotic and hilarious companion to the legendary Tropic of Cancer, in a smart new Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition. A riotous and explosive mixture of joys and frustrations, Tropic of Capricorn chronicles Miller's early life in New York, from his repressive Brooklyn childhood spent amongst 'a galaxy of screwballs' to frantic, hilarious years of dead-end jobs and innumerable erotic adventures. Irreverent and ironic, Tropic of Capricorn is both a comic portrait of the irrepressible Miller himself and a scathing attack on respectable America, the very foundations of which he hoped to shatter. The publication of Tropic of Capricorn and its sister-volume Tropic of Cancer in Paris in the 1930s was hailed by Samuel Beckett as 'a momentous event in the history of modern writing'. The books were subsequently banned in the UK and the USA for nearly thirty years.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1930, Miller went to live in Paris. For the next ten years he mingled with impoverished expatriates and bohemian Parisians; his first published book, Tropic of Cancer appeared in 1934 from the Obelisk Press in Paris. It was followed five years later by its sister volume Tropic of Capricorn. Sexually explicit, these books electrified the European literary avant-garde and were almost universally banned outside France. In 1961, after an epic legal battle, Tropic of Cancer was finally published in the States (and then in England in 1963). Miller became a household name, hailed by the Sixties counter-culture as a prophet of freedom and sexual revolution. He died on June 7 1980.

From AudioFile

Campbell Scott might possibly be a narrative dead-ringer for the eponymous protagonist in Henry Miller's semi-autobiographical TROPIC OF CAPRICORN. Scott's dry, languorous, and lovely voice, which he uses for most of this book, hits all of Miller's cynical but observant notes as he describes the great muddle and mess of humanity around him in New York City during the 1920s. Most of the time Scott sounds almost apathetic, mimicking the distant, disenchanted tone of Miller. Yet, besides all the derogatory adjectives that can be thrown at Miller--misogynist, misanthrope, depressed artist--the writer was also ebullient, mystical, and euphoric. Scott, however, captures this side of Miller barely at all, to the detriment of this production. R.L.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007204450
• ISBN 13: 9780007204458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336