Baffled by The Tropic of Cancer 8 out of 10 for the joker who signs this note, while George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Samuel Beckett and other luminaries considered it "a momentous event in the history of modern writing…a really excellent piece of work’

 Baffled by The Tropic of Cancer

8 out of 10 for the joker who signs this note, while George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Samuel Beckett and other luminaries considered it "a momentous event in the history of modern writing…a really excellent piece of work’

 

You find The Tropic of Cancer on The Modern Library 100 Best Novels List https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ The All – TIME 100 Novels List https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ but it is not among the 1,000 novels you must read, if you ask the under signed, who had tried entering the universe of this acclaimed some years ago and failed and now, determined to navigate the tumultuous waters no matter how, even if he would sail as a goose, without taking anything in, registering no feelings, sensations, forget about deep understanding, epiphanies, life changing determination, it still feels like the results are not satisfying and the test of resilience has not been passed, for the mix of challenges and curses have still turned me off…

 

How things, fashions, habits change...these days it is not just outrageous to be hairy, there is a Bill Maher joke, who refers to changes in attitudes, fashions, attitudes to body care and appearance and the question that young people would ask what is pubic hair…They don't even know what that is in California, whereas there is a character in The Tropic of Cancer  who has Shaved her ‘cunt’ and one of the males  thinks it is repulsive, comical…can you imagine…he continues with ‘There is nothing to it, especially when it is shaved…

He thinks it Ghastly –so what would he say today, when that is the norm, the shaving, or what is it, for they clearly use some other means, laser, permanent removal though some advanced technological means…I mean I think I have seen some adverts insisting on permanent removal, in the window of some hair saloons that were referring to other body hair, or all body hair, which I think is the rule of the present…

 

It is Titillating to read about erotica, but it is perhaps too much on erotica but it is very Present, pervasive, at least for this reader who is getting on fifty – should I say all…never mind, let us keep it a secret…as if many reach this far and get onto the intimacy of the joker – and it comes back to the reception of major works by the audience…it depends mostly on what the reader does with the magnum opus, if he only looks at the sensual passages, then he loses the deep signification, the cultural messages, the reference to Albertine and Proust, Peeperkorn from The Magic Mountain and Thomas Mann – incidentally, I see The Magic Mountain as Nec Plus Ultra, the Absolute Joy, the Perfect chef d’oeuvre and when compared with it, The Tropic of Cancer is KO in the boxing ring – and all he is left with is an incredible number of cunts…

By the way, what will modern audiences say about this book I wonder…of course, there is satire there, but the exotique language that had the book banned and then cherished for its veracity, the use of terms that are omnipresent in real life, but anathema in literary productions included so many ‘cunts’ – shaved or not – and the attitude towards women is loathsome…yes, I get that we have negative characters in what we read and we are supposed to follow the role models and see that the sexists, male chauvinist pigs serve as examples we must not follow, their abjection is not something we want to emulate…

 

Only here, the distance between the negative and positive appears to be blurred – which is how life works, right – and this may add to the enticement, the appeal of The Tropic of Cancer, but it still feels somewhat exaggerated…’there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium’…the latter quote is from a passage praising Henry Miller, but it can work both ways, one can feel that the delirium is awesome and so cool, grand and fabulous and another – yours truly- see this as too much

In the same way that the author mentions the ‘Missing tooth, which is attractive in Paris, but not in the States, where the prostitute would starve if she has that issue’…there are passages that I enjoy ‘No money, no Hopes…I am the happiest man alive…pubic hairs pasted on Boris's face…Lizard from ass…Mona one cunt out of a million…Write near mirror to see myself…I will be a Jew for Tania a Jew hates the Jews ...many in Montmartre’…incidentally, there is the bizarre description of cunts and also the attitude towards Jews…is it anti-Semitic…if we look on the net for clearance, they say Henry miller had ‘complicated feelings about Jews’

 

Trying to make more – or any – sense of this fundamental novel I took down some notes on what attracted my attention, which alas was not the concentration needed for such an opus ‘Careless about money...digression about happiness…But hungry...looks at bones on child's plate…Live as an animal, beast…I will live even if I have to be a cannibal…I have found God, I am free…If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one I will go to fatten myself

They are gay but not as in being homosexual, the term we use today, for back then, gay meant merry, joyous…What an ass...She wants to move in with me, but I don't even know her name…I'm tired of cunt…That one over there...I had her, not bad...when I come, she says are you through cold blooded...fascinating, she didn't say ‘au revoir’…Maybe you want to take the mother...I have this cunt lined up…

 

Then there is that stupid feeling that ‘I can write something similar to this…all cunts and sexual innuendo, experiences, the almost threesome with that fellow who is one of the richest fifty, maybe even twenty in the land…but that is of course horseshit…another thought that came by earlier refers to the Striptease metaphor in the resplendent Small World by glorious David Lodge http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/enraptured-in-small-world-by-david.html ...we are told that reading can be associated to watching a striptease act and today I thought that one reason why The Tropic of Cancer did not really work for yours truly – not by a long shot to the divine extent it is supposed to, given its status as a classic, one of the 100 best you can find…though not in my book – was that the striptease was actually the reverse operation, where instead of getting more access and moving towards the rose of all roses, it was as if more layers would be added up and the core, mysteries, pleasures of the opus were in fact covered, ever more distant…

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