You can be Henry Miller, and I'll be Anais Nin.

Cross another book off the list of books I’ve “always been meaning to read.” Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. At times a slog, but I’m glad I’ve finally read it. I mean, how could anyone not want to read a work that was so shocking when it was written that it was banned in the States for thirty years, and is said to have revolutionized the American novel? The cover of the edition I read even claims that “American literature today begins and ends with what Miller has done.” Whew. Now that’s some shit right there. I plunged in, ready to be rocked.

Well, I wasn’t really. But I think it would be impossible to be, in this day and age, with everything that’s come after. And maybe that speaks to the achievement of this work, I don’t know. I think it’s one of those books that must be read with the context in which it was written kept firmly in mind. I mean, it could be argued that that’s the case with all art: context inevitably plays a roll in how it is perceived; and not just the context in which it was created, but also the context in which it is observed. Which is true. But interestingly, while reading it, Tropic of Cancer is very nearly timeless. The French setting is essential and ever-present, but the era is not nearly so. So I found it necessary to periodically remind myself of the time and place in which it was created. Otherwise, I’d be all sarcastic-like, rolling my eyes and thinking, “Ooooooh, stream-of-consciousness,” or “Ooooooh, surreal, dream-like passages,” or “Ooooooh, graphic, matter-of-fact descriptions of sex and STDs and multiple partners and whores and blatant misogyny... Never heard of any of that before, Mr. Miller. You are so totally rocking my world right now.” Snore.

See what I mean? None of those things are particularly earth-shattering anymore. But I imagine that at the time, a “novel” in which the “main character” shares the name of the novel’s author, speaks in the first person, relates things as if they’re simply thoughts flowing onto the page (several passages read like some of Hunter Thompson’s drug-induced ravings), and speaks frankly about the basest of human desires, was probably pretty titillating.

And who knows. Maybe all the talk of cunt and twat and whores and group sex and the like really got people off. (Oh come on, you knew where this was headed, right? Clearly I myself owe a debt to Mr. Miller, and never even knew it.)

Oh, there's a big bare titty on the cover, too.