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A review by sarahreadsaverylot
Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
4.0
To be read in great gulps, and with an equally great grain of sand.
I read Miller like a tourist might visit a well known slum. I'm there for the grit and the hustle, the flavour, the catharsis. I want to see everything I can see without getting swept away. I want to return to my safe world after enjoying the flush of something a little bit dangerous.
Thematically, there is very little here that excites me. Indeed he is drawing on Lawrence and Freud in ways that feel a bit tired in 2014. I opened this book with no expectation of finding something relatable or enlightening, but none of that matters when the prose hits you like a punch in the ovaries. It's a bold, unapologetic, unrestrained symphony of hyperbole. It's a festive mess of human detail. It's equal parts experiment and document. It's provocation and celebration and a fair amount of masturbation from a master raconteur.
I read Miller like a tourist might visit a well known slum. I'm there for the grit and the hustle, the flavour, the catharsis. I want to see everything I can see without getting swept away. I want to return to my safe world after enjoying the flush of something a little bit dangerous.
Thematically, there is very little here that excites me. Indeed he is drawing on Lawrence and Freud in ways that feel a bit tired in 2014. I opened this book with no expectation of finding something relatable or enlightening, but none of that matters when the prose hits you like a punch in the ovaries. It's a bold, unapologetic, unrestrained symphony of hyperbole. It's a festive mess of human detail. It's equal parts experiment and document. It's provocation and celebration and a fair amount of masturbation from a master raconteur.