Tropic of Cancer

De: Henry Miller

Narrado por: Campbell Scott

Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer chronicles the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s with unapologetic gusto, and is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, ""one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."" The audiobook is narrated by acclaimed actor Campbell Scott.

Now hailed as an American classic, Miller's masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its initial 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.

©1961 Grove Press, Inc.; (P)2008 HarperCollins Publishers

So much poetry, so little plot

I had read this decades ago. I wasn't all that impressed. But hearing it read aloud makes the poetry come through. There is a lot of musing on life and Paris and friends: and that is lovely to listen to. There really isn't any plot, just some extended narrative and a few anecdotes. I thought the narrator did a good job of playing the observer that Henry Miller was. My only complaint was that it needed more chapter breaks.

Miller's Paris

Good listen. The recording cuts off at the last word of every chapter... It sounds like it should continue, but when I checked my copy, I was reassured—It is unabridged. Overall would reccomend.

A Vulgar Love Letter to Paris

This one was tough for me. Wildly vulgar (which doesn't bother me too much) and misogynistic (which bothers me very much) and yet also, in parts, a beautifully written love letter to Paris with many spot-on observations about expat life as an American abroad that feel as real now as when they were written in the '30s.

I'm not sure I would recommend it exactly but if you can get past the misogyny--I don't know if I would have been able to except that I had just finished American Psycho which is much much worse--maybe. I did find the last third less interesting that the first two-thirds but it was still worth finishing. Although the performance was very good.

Landmark in literature— not for everyone

I’m not the right audience for this book. It’s well-written, meaning the prose is outstanding and remarkable. But the narrative is a bit hard to follow, the characters are hard to get a grip on, and it’s... well I understand the prose is the point. I didn’t love it. I didn’t love the performance either. Sounds like he’s whispering the whole time kind of and they have a bunch of music stings that are in strange places in the text— mid paragraph for example.

henry miller is a master storyteller.

campbell scott couldn't match Henry's enthusiamsm and disgust with parisian life, but still, one gets used to it. i was saddened the story ended, but thank audible there's more!