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Sep 04, 2011jhwendland rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Henry Miller employs a stream-of-consciousness style of writing in this experimental work. Tropic of Cancer more closely resembles a diary than it does a novel. Because Miller doesn't follow the standard conflict-rising action-resolution formula, this book can be difficult to digest. Miller breaches countless taboos in Tropic of Cancer, so much so that by the time of the book's abrupt close, the reader inevitably becomes desensitized to the once shocking debauchery of Miller and his friends. The well-documented book ban had the unintended consequence of allowing Tropic of Cancer to occupy an almost mythical realm of literature, but this book is certainly not "one of the ten or twenty great novels" of the twentieth century. Miller's writing is crude and unrefined, and Tropic of Cancer is weighed down by lengthy, unintelligible, hallucinatory discourses on the history of man. Stranger still, Miller intermittently pens long-winded, self-indulgent passages in which he unconvincingly peddles the earth-shattering import of his allegedly revolutionary book. I can understand why people succumb to the hype surrounding this book. For me, Tropic of Cancer was a disappointment.