Places Discussed
*Paris
*Paris. French capital city to which the narrator has moved with the hope of becoming a writer. Tropic of Cancer is a largely autobiographical account of Henry Miller’s life and experiences in the south-central Parisian quarter of Montparnasse, from his arrival early in 1930 through 1932. Although Miller appears as himself, or at least a version of himself, his wife June is portrayed as Mona and his good friend Alfred Perlès as Carl. Colorful journalist Wambly Bald becomes the obsessive womanizer Van Norden. As the novel’s narrator, Miller is not consistent in his treatment of Paris; he portrays it from different viewpoints as his mood changes and as his acceptance of circumstances grows. Initially, he presents Paris as a symbol of everything he finds wrong with life-denying modern civilization: a “huge organism diseased in every part.” Some neighborhoods he describes as literal garbage heaps. Later, in the spring sun, the city looks different, and the narrator grows more content.
As a down-and-out writer, the narrator often has no place to stay; at such times, the streets of Paris become his refuge. Popular sidewalk cafés such as the Dôme, the Rotonde, and the Coupole provide him with vantage points from which he observes the city’s fascinating street life, hoping for the appearance of an acquaintance who may treat him to a drink or a meal.
Apartments
Apartments. Parisian homes of the friends of the narrator, who is obsessed with shelter and food. He sleeps wherever someone will give him space on a floor or in a hall. After some thought, he devises a scheme whereby he eats a meal with each of seven friends once a week. What he sees in their abodes provides him with further material for his indictment of society. The apartment of one friend is strikingly sterile: “There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced.” Boris and Tania’s apartment is squalid but equally repugnant. At one point the narrator is taken in by a group of Russians, but their heavy food, their habit of sharing meals with worm-ridden dogs, and their poor hygiene drive the suddenly fastidious American away. For a while he stays with an Indian named Nanantatee, but the man’s hypocrisy and meanness lead to the narrator’s labeling him Mister Nonentity.
Miss Hamilton’s brothel
Miss Hamilton’s brothel. Brothel to which the narrator is asked to accompany another Indian man, a naïve disciple of Mohandas Gandhi. In one of the novel’s comic high points, the Indian shocks the brothel’s otherwise worldly employees by mistaking the function of the bidet. Tropic of Cancer was outspokenly explicit for its day, and much of its content involves the prostitutes of Paris.
*Seine River
*Seine River (sayn). Major French stream flowing through Paris that serves the narrator as a metaphor for everything flowing and in flux. Like Paris and its teeming streets, the Seine’s character changes as the narrator learns to accept his fate. Looking at it once, he sees “mud and desolation, street lamps drowning, men and women choking to death, the bridges covered with houses, slaughterhouses of love.” Later he characterizes the river as a “great artery,” and later still feels it flowing through him.
*Dijon
*Dijon (dee-ZHAHN). French city southeast of Paris where the narrator teaches English at a lycée (school) after he loses the proofreading job that Carl gets for him in Paris. His new position involves terrible meals and a dingy room but no pay. It is winter, so bitterly cold that toilets freeze, and the narrator feels like a prisoner in the spiritless institution. Dijon itself strikes him as...
(This entire section contains 617 words.)
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a dirty hole.
Literary Techniques
Miller's "autobiographical romances," also known as "auto-novels," should be viewed as individual chapters within a multi-volume "Book" of his life. The essence of his approach is encapsulated in Emerson's idea that novels would eventually become biographies, a notion Miller includes as an epigraph in Tropic of Cancer. Thus, his significant works can be categorized into a quartet and a triad. The quartet comprises Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring (1938), The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), where he acts primarily as an observer or commentator. The triad includes Tropic of Capricorn (1939), Sexus (1949), and Nexus (1960), where he is more of a participant in shaping his artistic awareness. As the inaugural book in this series, Tropic of Cancer portrays the artist/hero as fully developed, assured in his abilities and insights, with a voice that reflects this confidence. Its tone is distinctive, unique, and somewhat intimidating towards people and society, while being perceptive and captivated by art and nature.
The book itself isn't strictly a novel; it resembles more a journal chronicling a year in a surreal city. It is a collection of sketches, essays, anecdotes, and poems. Comprising fifteen sections, aside from a brief trip to Dijon near the end, it is set entirely in Paris or within the narrator's mind. The timeline is quite flexible, often defying traditional chronology.
Literary Precedents
Similar to Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855), Tropic of Cancer lacks direct predecessors in American literature. While the travel journal and the early picaresque novel could be considered distant forebears, and certain tales by Boccaccio or Chaucer are somewhat related, Miller's work stands largely on its own. Certain elements in the book do have precedents, such as lists reminiscent of Rabelais or catalogues similar to those found in Emerson. Influences from Andre Breton's surrealist manifesto are evident, and traces of Rimbaud's symboliste esthetique can be observed. However, this book is ultimately a unique creation, belonging to a category all its own.
Adaptations
Producer Joseph E. Levine acquired the rights to film Tropic of Cancer in 1962, and by 1965, Joseph Strick had adapted the book into a movie. Rip Torn portrayed the character meant to represent "Henry Miller," while Ellen Burstyn played his wife, June. Unfortunately, the film is a failure, with Torn, usually a talented actor, depicting "Miller" as a frenzied satyr devoid of any artistic depth. As Pauline Kael pointed out, the film is "so much less than the book that it almost seems deliberately intended to reduce Miller ... to pipsqueak size." This leaves one to ponder what might have occurred if Miller hadn't rejected Stanley Kubrick's offers in 1958 — "holding out for the day when we really have freedom of expression."
