Henry Miller: Tropic of Cancer

Such a fun read. The parallels to Kerouac and the realization of why Miller was such a big hero of Jack's was so immediately obvious. What a light-bulb. The zest for life, the splurge of ideas, ramblings, the seemingly effortless insightful observations, the ability to use the trashiest and most vulgar language and then turn around and use the highest levels of prose and poetry and Francais. To flow in and out of these different forms of language fluently and keep the reader on his/her toes and in my case ripping through Webster's and clicking through google to look up the French phrases. Augh. So good. A pilgrimage up the coast to Big Sur to Miller's library is inevitable. I feel that it is a must for this project, which has already brought so much joy in just 18 days. This novel and the reactions and the history...the banning in multiple countries for obvious reasons...I mean, 1934...damn...the balls on this kid....the sale of the original manuscript for $165,000 in February of 1986...the praise from not only critics and fans, but the most elite of his contemporaries...the legions of younger followers and aspiring American authors. It is liberating as a young aspiring author of even something as trite as these blogs and my leather bound diary full of poems, songs, reflections, ideas- to read people from farther and farther back in history and to put their works in their own contemporary contexts and to relate to their boiling American blood and open language and brutal, painful honesty. They are so easy to relate to and then bango! They floor you with something brilliant like Miller's sudden description of Whitman in the middle of the end:

"...He was the Poet of the Body and the Soul, Whitman. The first and the last poet. He is almost undecipherable today, a monument covered with rude hieroglyphs for which there is no key. It seems strange almost to mention his name over here. There is no equivalent in the languages of Europe for the spirit which he immortalized. Europe is saturated with art and her soil is full of dead treasures, but what Europe has never had is a free, healthy spirit, what you might call a MAN. Goethe was the nearest approach, but Goethe was a stuffed shirt, by comparison..."

 This is the kind of gold that lurks between the covers of Tropic and rewards the reader like a slap in the face to calm hysteria. I was quick to realize that it is insanely daunting to write about these masters, but it is these same masters who urge me on from within my own head. Rest in peace dear pioneers of the page, and thank you.