Tropic of Cancer
Now hailed as an American classicTropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. 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 Canceris now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."
Stats for nerds
6recommend
19mentions
18people
2008–2026years
37% recommend63% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I can't recall the quote, but "A book worth burning is a book worth reading."
No one has to support or agree with ideas to delve into them, find their flaws and strengths (reality and people are mixtures of gray), and consider other perspectives. To avoid topics is one path to ignorance and decline.
- Das Kapital
- Understanding Socialism
- The God Delusion
- Bible
- Quran
- Mein Kampf
- Atlas Shrugged
- (numerous critiques of objectivism and its political-economic brand: libertarianism)
- Critique of Pure Reason
- The Social Contract
- Industrial Society and Its Future
- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Guns, Germs, and Steel
== And some fiction ===
- Howl
- Tropic of Cancer
- Four Past Midnight (yes, Stephen King)
- Maus
- Favorite Technical: The Pragmatic Programmer. This is something that I should have read much earlier.
Favorite Fiction: Pale Fire. Just pure astonishment. Left me speechless with how he made the language sing.
Also great (in no particular order):
- The Sewing Girl's Tale (non-fiction)
- The Odyssey (poem)
- Tropic of Cancer (novel)
- Tenth of December (short story collection).
- Endurance (non-fiction)
- The Billion Dollar Spy (non-fiction)
- Agent Sonya (non-fiction)
- Agent Running in the Field (novel)
- Little Dorrit (novel)
To be honest, I love most of the stuff I read this year. Only a handful of books I didn't like enough to read through.
- Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" Live life, follow your dream, and don't let hunger stop you from your work. And pay attention to everything.
- Depends on how old you are, or for me it did. Some books resonate at different points in a person's life. The fiction that's had the most impact on me as an adult was all stuff I read in my early 30s.
* Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller — Perfect for a single man in his 30s. Very solipsistic and hedonistic, which is a great way to explore that decade. Each of the books in the series is a novel length prose poem. Absolutely beautiful
* Journey to the End of The Night by Louis Ferdinand Celine — my favorite book in the world. Very misanthropic, set in WWI. The protagonist finds himself drafted into the war and does his best to survive while the brave people around him die like idiots, it escalates from there. The most beautiful line I've ever read is from a part of the book where the protagonist is hanging out at a brothel: "Toward one of the beautiful girls there I soon developed an uncommon feeling of trust, which in frightened people takes the place of love." there are jaw-droppers like that on every other page
* Crime and Punishment — a cautionary tale about exactly the kind of solipsism and misanthropy that can take us over in our 30s. Fast paced and beautifully written, it reads like a modern crime thriller.
For fun conceptual stuff
* Ficciones by Borges — short stories that will twist your mind up, each are more puzzle than narrative, but tremendously engaging nonetheless. Ted Chiang is the modern writer that I would identify as the most similar in spirit to Borges.
As a note—I'm a speculative fiction author. Most of what I read these days is sff and nerdy lit fic. The value in fiction is the same as the value in philosophy, it exposes you to the inside of peoples' minds in a way that other forms of narrative entertainment do not, and the real good stuff acts as fuel for concept creation.
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut 1984 by George Orwell To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918) On the Road by Jack Kerouac The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson Mccullers The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Ulysses by James Joyce
- Not really related at all to this discussion, and not technically the first line (though its on the first page), but this line from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was the most captivating book starter for me ever: "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."
How could you not keep reading after that?
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