If Henry Miller’s first novel, TROPIC OF CANCER, can be seen as a modern version of Dante’s INFERNO, then this novel is clearly Miller’s version of Dante’s PURGATORIO. The earlier book describes a world of sex and surreal violence without love. This novel opens in a similarly hellish environment, but the central character (a fictional version of the author) recognizes its nature, passes through a series of purgatorial punishments, and emerges possessed of an angelic or paradisiac vision.

The book opens with Miller living in New York and working as personnel manager of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company. He describes himself as a clown living in an insane world, dominated by his deadly business life, violence at home in a loveless marriage, and crazy random sex. With the lesson of his father’s broken spirit before him, he dreams of the imaginative freedom he finds in books but sinks into a torpor of despair at the life around him.

The only force that keeps him from giving in to his despair is the sensuous power he finds in sex. The middle portion of the book is a catalog of sexual encounters, present and remembered, all explicitly described in Miller’s uniquely explosive language. This sexual landscape is purgatorial, filled with suffering and betrayal and loss, but ultimately liberating.

The book is dedicated to “Her,” a woman like Dante’s Beatrice who opens to him a vision of life beyond the wheel of destiny. He achieves resurrection from the tomb of the telegraph company in a vision of life as love. He calls himself Gottlieb Leberecht Muller, a God-loved and loving, right living man who has baptized himself anew. In his new angelic identity as a man who has walked out on himself, a happy rock in the divine stream of life, he meets Mona (Her) and begins a new life as an artist with both death and birth behind him.

Bibliography:

Brown, J. D. Henry Miller. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1986. Intersperses biography with criticism. Useful for placing the works in context of the life. Bibliography includes interviews.

Hassan, Ihab. The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Contains a brief but sound discussion of the themes and imagery of Tropic of Capricorn.

Lewis, Leon. Henry Miller: The Major Writings. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. The chapter on Tropic of Capricorn focuses on the author’s relationship with June Smith. The author intelligently answers those critics who accuse Miller of misogyny and pornography.

Wickes, George, ed. Henry Miller and the Critics. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963. Contains an incisive, unforgiving, and appreciative critique of Tropic of Capricorn.

Widmer, Kingsley. Henry Miller. Boston: Twayne, 1990. The most comprehensive introduction to Miller’s life and works, containing a chapter on the main themes of Tropic of Capricorn. Notes and bibliography.