Up to the present, my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. Late in the novel, Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself, stating: Set in France (primarily Paris) during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tropic of Cancer centers on Miller's life as a struggling writer. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities.

: v–xxxįollowing the introduction is a preface written by Nin in 1934, which begins as follows: But everything he has written is a poem in the best as well as in the broadest sense of the word. I do not call him a poet because he has never written a poem he even dislikes poetry, I think. I call Henry Miller the greatest living author because I think he is.

The 1961 edition includes an introduction by Karl Shapiro written in 1960 and titled 'The Greatest Living Author'. These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies-captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly. In the 1961 edition, opposite the novel's title page is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: : 108 : 116 Emerson quotation, preface, and introduction : 109 In 1934, Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press published the book with financial backing from Nin, who had borrowed the money from Otto Rank. Miller gave the following explanation of why the book's title was Tropic of Cancer: 'It was because to me cancer symbolizes the disease of civilization, the endpoint of the wrong path, the necessity to change course radically, to start completely over from scratch.' : 38Īnaïs Nin helped to edit the book. As Miller discloses in the text of the book, he first intended to title it 'Crazy Cock'. : 105–107 The fictional Villa Borghese was actually 18 Villa Seurat in Paris' 14th arrondissement. Miller wrote the book between 19 during his 'nomadic life' in Paris.

Henry miller's tropic of cancer