Sort of a Reading Log

"He looks out the window again. It's drizzling. It's been drizzling this way for the last five days." It could just as well have been five years; these sentences encapsulate and reflect the emotional flow of the book "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. First published in the 1930s but then banned for 30 years in the US and the UK, this 'fictional autobiography' is a great stone heaved upon the back of a frail, but somehow still standing, man. It is a book of extremes, of dejected spirits and morals that are stamped upon and left disfigured in a puddle on a footpath. It is an urban tale, one of walls and being pushed against them, into them. It felt like an abundance, to imagine the 'portrait of desire' envisioned by Miller, to be placed in the context of a man trying to scrounge for food in a "like-a-whore" Paris full of people that aren't as much people as ambling shells of people. I would venture calling them carcasses implies they have spine, but the way Miller describes the multitude of them pictates them as self-interested puppeteered en masse lumps of flesh. I recall little generosity in the book, and I feel this is where the dark maw that I feel Miller thrashes about in descends from: a lack of empathy.

I picked up the book because Paulo Coelho was himself inspired by "Tropic of Cancer", saying it was written in blood. I share his point of view, now having read it myself. Whether it be menstrual flow, or the blood leaking in the sewers that seems to not travel in the veins of the Parisians Miller encounters, the book is written from suffering, with nails dug out into palms. It is a book of brokenness, a tale of separation and rejection that results in Miller's own soul-searching and its subsequent fruitlessness.

I feel unable to say much about the text beyond that, because it is a text of symbolism and reference, and yet a text of bone marrow and broken test tubes. Perhaps the book can be said to be about emptiness, but rather does it embody that, so that it not merely speaks of emptiness but imparts the experience of it with the reader. I found it difficult to read at the beginning and towards the middle because of my expectation that the book was going to lead somewhere within unchallenged convention, and instead what I found was absurdity. I felt at times that the book was acting against convention, and then at other times that the book recognised convention was unreal and thus had nothing to compare itself to, nor did it care to. It was in those latter times that I felt most able to comprehend Miller's tale, where he stood up and described the world around him, knowing he was part of it, but apart, having to remove himself from the machinations of conventional thinking and from that newfound space, gain perspective. And he pictated it with fuckings, cunts and pricks.

Sex, its definition within the parentheses of the time, is made into a whole paragraph. I put this towards the end, almost like an afterthought, though the truth is that the text is permeated with sexuality, with fireless passion and the possession of bodies by other bodies, their usage and disposal. A modern reader could identify misogyny in the text, though I venture that it ought not to be taken as such. Women are overpowered by men, yes, but I rather feel that the context justifies that, and thus the behavior exhibited spills not from Miller himself but the era he is in, though of this I cannot be sure. The wisdom he is bestowed falls upon the moving piles of still bodies and extended metaphors.

It is worth noting the most striking aspect of the text was the very frequent and rich use of metaphors and literary connections to enrich. The journey, even though content-wise is difficile and challenging to make sense of on a deeper level, is Miller's gift to the reader. The method of imparting wisdom is natural, attention-grabbing and rewarding. "Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space - space even more than time."

As a writer and a human, Miller finds himself unable to meet with the turning of the world. I venture that he doesn't quite find himself either, but rather, his animality, his hopelessness and senselessness, his havenot incarnation, his mirror shard that either cannot reflect or reflects more than is acceptable to know. Yet his exploration, his attempt at living despite the force of circumstance pushing him into the ground, is a struggle, one of reconciliation of selves and self, of parts and whole. And, appropriately, it ends in silence.