| Product Summary | | Format: Audio Book | | ISBN: 9780061477898 | | Publisher: Caedmon | | Publish Date: 9/1/2008 | | Buy.com Sku: 206196247 | | Item#: | | Dimensions (in Inches) 6.25H x 5L x 1T |
|
|
|
| | | Now hailed as an American classic, "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller''s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1943. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller''s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto, the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. "Tropic of Cancer" is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."
Annotation:
Down and out in Paris, the narrator of TROPIC OF CANCER hangs out in the Montparnasse neighborhood with fellow expatriates and artists. Told via turbulent, elaborate prose, the story is infused with graphic sexuality and sheer gusto. Originally published in 1934, TROPIC OF CANCER was banned from the U.S. until 1961; when it was finally printed here, the event of its publication became a pivotal moment in American obscenity law.
| PraiseNew York Herald Tribune (1924-1966)
"Mr. Henry Miller's autobiographical record of sex and hunger in the mouldy bohemias of Paris in the 1930s has been printed in this country for the first time....I must confess that after more than a quarter of a century, I find it as 'dated' and as anachronistic as Jurgen, or a novel by Ouida....One of the defects of censorship, I suppose, is that it tends to put criticism on the defensive. A book must be praised if it isn't to be damned. In the process, the work in question, instead of being soberly judged, achieves a spurious ambiguity....This is a hobo novel, a hobo life of the open boulevards, almost a piece of 'proletarian' fiction, in which sex has been subustituted for Marxism and 'naughty' words for revolutionary cliches....It is an old and obsolete book and, if it had been allowed its little day in the thirties, it would by now probably be as dead as most of the other shallow works of that sad era of doubt and confusion, of starvation and spiritual bankruptcy." - Leon Edel 6/25/61New York Times Book Review
"[This] was Henry Miller's first published volume, and it is as good as anything he has turned out since. It glows with the joy of discovery: I can write! ...To many readers 'Tropic of Cancer', strong language and all, may seem dated. But perhaps to many others the publication of the book here and now will re-emphasize its enduring freshness....Miller projects with gusto some of the great comic scenes of modern literature..... If literary quality is a criterion, these passages run far ahead of any considerations of obscenity; in themselves they guarantee that Henry Miller is an authentic, a significant author whose ripest work has been too long forbidden in his homeland." - H.T. Moore 6/18/61 (unknown)
"At last, an unprintable book that is readable" - Ezra Pound 1934 Poets & Writers
"Henry wanted me to take on the 'Tropic' books [for publication at my publishing house], but I didn't feel that would be prudent, because I was still drawing very heavily on the finances of my elder generation. I thought that the best way to keep them happy and to provide for other works of good literature was not to flaunt 'Tropic of Cancer' in their faces. But Henry and I remained friends for years, and [I] published 20 of his less salacious books." - James Laughlin Interview
"...Henry Miller is one of us, in spirit, in style, in his power and in his gifts, a universal writer like all those who have been able to put into a book their own vision of Paris." - Blaise Cendrars 1951 Introduction
"[Such a book as Miller's] has become so unusual as to seem almost anomalous [for] it is the book of a man who is happy....Exactly the aspects of life that fill C?l?ne with horror are the ones that appeal to him. So far from protesting he is accepting. And the very word 'acceptance' call up his real affinity, another American, Walt Whitman." - George Orwell Book Jacket
"American literature today begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done." - Lawrence Durrell |
| Author Bio| Henry Miller | | Henry Miller was born December 26, 1891 in Manhattan, but his family almost immediately moved to Brooklyn, where he spent his childhood. In 1909, Miller enrolled in City College but did not thrive on academic routine and stayed for only two months. He worked at a variety of jobs, including driving a cab. In 1917, Miller married his first wife, and they had one child. He worked for Western Union until his second wife, June Mansfield, a taxi driver, began to support him. They traveled to Europe, where their relationship became problematic, and they separated; Miller moved to Paris in 1930, where he continued what would become a long and lucrative writing career, beginning with TROPIC OF CANCER, still his best-known work, which along with TROPIC OF CAPRICORN chronicles Miller's life as an expatriate in Paris. Originally published in France, the books were banned in the U.S. for 30 years and eventually published by Grove Press. In Paris, Miller met and befriended Ana?s Nin, who became his longtime lover and occasional benefactor. (Their relationship is exhaustively documented by Nin in her endless diaries.) Miller left Paris in 1939 and, after spending time in Greece and traveling in America, he settled in Big Sur, where he lived from 1944 to 1963, helping to establish the area as an artists' colony. In California, Miller married the last two of his eventual five wives, producing two more children. After more European travel, Miller retired to Pacific Palisades in Southern California, where he spent the last 20 years of his life writing less but finding great joy in painting. He died in 1980, at home. |
| |
|
|
__USERID__
http://www.buy.com/prod/tropic-of-cancer-cd/q/loc/106/206196247.html
|
Best-sellers | New | Upcoming | Calendars 2009 | 10% off Amazon Books Pricing on over 900,000 Titles
