Katie's Reviews > Tropic of Cancer

Considering I often found this virtually unreadable I'm amazed I got to the end, reading every word. First published in 1934 when undoubtedly it would have been shocking with its relentless lexicon of crude language including every racial slur out there and its insistence on referring to just about every woman as a c**t. It's a book in which men relentlessly revel in degrading women. Miller deploys an Emerson quote in his foreword, the gist of which is that new novels ought to take the form of autobiography and record experience truthfully. But if this is an unfiltered expose of the male psyche then the male psyche is one ugly place. I actually didn't buy the honesty ticket at all. A lot of the time it felt like Miller was posturing. He failed to get his early novels published and his bitterness and anger seems at virtually all times his source material. In fact I found it's only when he isn't feeding his bitterness and cynicism that his writing excels - there were some beautiful descriptions of Paris and I especially loved his appraisal of Matisse. The rest of the time it often felt like the work of a brilliant mind moored to the emotions of an adolescent boy.

I recently read one of Anais Nin's journals. She was a good friend of Miller's and I found lots of similarities between the two of them - first and foremost, the posturing, the desperation to be taken seriously as artists, as if, underneath, they were riddled with insecurities. Like Miller, Nin could be brilliant when she came out from behind her pose but ultimately I can't help thinking they were both essentially poseurs. But what do I know? This made it into the Guardian's top 100 novels. I can only imagine the majority of voters were men.