Tropic of Cancer is Henry Miller's best book and Henry Miller is the 20th century's bawdiest, loudest and cockiest crotch lice metaphysician. Infrequently polished and seemingly unedited, Miller's Parisian Tropic nonetheless remains one of literature's greatest rants, surprising you on every odd page with the force and brutality of its truth. Miller asks for and needs no apology; his words speak for himself, and, I think, for a lot of us. I could only excerpt a small piece, but this little address to one of his friend's wives will give you a sense of the harmonious thinking of Miller's two brains and the power of his prodigious pen. Tropic of Cancer was a wake up call to the early 20th century, and, I think, even in the brief passage below, you'll still see why. -JM
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From Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Tania is like Irène. She expects fat letters. But there is another Tania, a Tania like a big seed, who scatters pollen everywhere -- or, let us say, a little bit of Tolstoy, a stable scene in which the fetus is dug up. Tania is a fever, too -- les voies urinaires, Café de la Liberté Place des Vosges, bright neckties on the Boulevard Montparnasse, dark bathrooms, porto sec, Abdullah cigarettes, the adagio sonata Pathetique, aural amplificators, anecdotal seances, burnt sienna breasts, heavy garters, what time is it, golden pheasants stuffed with chestnuts, taffeta fingers, vaporish twilights turning to ilex, acromegaly, cancer and delirium, warm veils, poker chips, carpets of blood and soft thighs. Tania says so that every one may hear: "I love him!" And while Boris scalds himself with whisky she says: "Sit down here! O Boris . . .Russia . . . what'll I do? I'm bursting with it!" At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warn cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle of your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider, I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris' chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces . . .
