Lecture 5

[Henry Miller & Friend]

Henry Miller:
Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Setting

Anthology Texts:

• Henry Miller: from Tropic of Cancer (1934)
• George Orwell: from Inside the Whale (1940)

History of the Ban:

Tropic of Cancer was first published in Paris in 1934 and remained officially banned from the United States for three decades, but college students smuggled thousands of copies into the United States in that time until Grove Press published the novel in the United States. Of nearly two million copies of the book distributed, nearly three-quarters of a million were returned to the publisher. The book was involved in at least 40 criminal cases against wholesalers and booksellers, even after the federal government refused to ban the hook, An untold number of civil suits to suppress the book have also occurred, as have "voluntary" withdrawals from sale after local intimidation.

In 1950, Ernest Besig, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, attempted to import both Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn into the United States and initiated the first court case involving the novels. Citing Section 1305 of the United States Code, Customs department officials held the books and Besig sued the government. Before the case went to trial, Besig requested a motion to admit 19 depositions from literary critics testifying to the literary value of the novels and to Miller’s stature as a serious writer. The motion was denied by Judge Louis A. Goodman, who stated bluntly:

In my opinion the dominant effect of the two respondent hooks is obscene. Both books are replete with long passages that are filthy and revolting and that tend to excite lustful thoughts and desires. While the books also have passages, and indeed chapters, that may be said to have literary merit, the obscene portions have no literary value; they are directly, completely and wholly filthy and obscene and have no reasonable relation to any literary concept inherent in the books' theme.

The case went to trial without a jury in 1951 with Judge Goodman presiding. Despite the presentation by Besig of literary reviews of Miller's work and the statements from critics describing the literary merits of the books, the judge condemned the books and declared them obscene. In closing statements, Judge Goodman wrote,

The many long filthy descriptions of sexual experiences, practices and organs are of themselves admitted to be lewd .... It is sufficient to say that the many obscene passages in the books have such an evil stench that to include them here in footnotes would make this opinion pornographic. ... There are several passages where the female sexual organ and its function are described and referred to in such detailed and vulgar language as to create nausea in the reader. If this be importable literature, then the dignity of the human person and the stability of the family unit, which are the cornerstones of society, are lost to us.

Besig appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and on October 23, 1953, the novels were again declared "obscene" by a unanimous decision in Besig v. United States, 208 F. 2d 142 (9th Cir. 1953). In his written decision, Circuit Judge Albert Lee Stephens characterized the books as being the "unprintable word of the debased and morally bankrupt" and claimed that, even taken as a whole, they lacked literary merit. He stated:

Practically everything that the world loosely regards as sin is detailed in the vivid, lurid, salacious language of smut, prostitution, and dirt. And all of it is related without the slightest expressed idea of its abandon. Consistent with the general tenor of the books, even human excrement is dwelt upon in the dirtiest words possible.

The 1961 Grove Press edition of Tropic of Cancer attracted numerous later legal actions because no test case had been heard by the Supreme Court, as there had been in the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Grove Press delayed appealing the earliest cases to the Supreme Court, and the delay in securing a definitive judgment proved costly because the publishing firm committed itself to assisting every bookseller prosecuted. Five state courts declared the novel "obscene" in State v. Huntington, no. 24657, Super. Ct., Hartford County, Conn. (1962) (Connecticut); Grove Press, Inc. v. Florida, 156, So. 2d 537 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1963) (Florida); Haiman v. Morris, Ill. Sup. Ct., June 18, 1964 (opinion not printed; later withdrawn) (Illinois); Commonwealth v. Robin, no. 3177, C.P. Phila Co. Penn. (1962) (Pennsylvania): and People v. Fritch, 13 N.Y.2d 119, 192 N.E.2d 713 (1963) (4-3 decision) New York). Within the same period, California, Massachusetts and Wisconsin declared the novel "not obscene" in Zeitlin v. Arnebergh, 31 Cal. 800, 383 P.2d 152 (1963)(unanimous); Attorney General v. Book Named "Tropic of Cancer," 345 Mass. 11, 184 N.E.2 d 328 (1962) (4-3 decision); and McCauley v. Tropic of Cancer, 20 Wise. 2d 134, 121 N.W.2d 545 (1963) (4-3 decision).

On June 22, 1964, in a 5 to 4 decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577 (1964), the United States Supreme Court reversed the Florida decision of Grove Press, Inc. v. Florida, 156 So. 2d 537 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1963). The judgment was reversed by a per curiam order in which Justice William J. Brennan Jr. declared that "material dealing with sex in a manner that advocates ideas, or that has literary or scientific or artistic value or any other form of social importance, may not be branded as obscenity and denied the constitutional protection."

– Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald & Dawn B. Sova, 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (New York: Checkmark Books, 1999): 325-27.

Setting:

This is clearly crucial for Miller – and certainly for subsequent readers and commentators. Paris (later on Big Sur) was regarded as his “territory” in the same way that Hardy’s Wessex or Dickens’s London were identified with a particular novelist.

Though he may have welcomed, and even consciously fostered this identification at first, he certainly shied away from its somewhat-belittling implications in later years. Again, the identification with the provincial-turned-cosmopolitan Roman Virgil is important here.

I should note further that by “setting” I mean location in place and time.

[Henry and June]

Workshop 5:
Inside the Whale

We'll begin with the book report on Tropic of Cancer, then move on to do the class exercise in pairs or small groups.

Exercise 5:
Where is Francis?

[W. H. Auden & Christopher Isherwood: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935)]

The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A Play in Three Acts, by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the first Auden-Isherwood collaboration and an important contribution to English poetic drama in the 1930s. It was published in 1935 and first performed by the Group Theatre in 1936.

The play describes the quest by the hero Alan Norman to find Sir Francis Crewe, the missing heir of Honeypot Hall in Crewe. The quest takes him on a satiric journey through Europe and England, accompanied by a large dog, who proves to be Sir Francis in disguise. Auden and Isherwood wrote two versions of the end of the play. In Ishwerwood's version, which appears in the printed text, Sir Francis denounces the villagers and leaves to join a vaguely-defined revolutionary movement. In Auden's revised version, which was performed on stage, Sir Francis denounces the villagers and is killed.

- Wikipedia

• The play has been performed at different times, with very different messages.
• Does it seem to you to offer any analogies with Miller's notes from "inside the whale"?

[The Dog Beneath the Skin: An Epidemic Epic]

Next week:

Group 4: Book report on The Power and the Glory due.

[The woman taken in adultery]

Tropic of Cancer (1934)

[Tropic of Cancer (1st edition)]

Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Extract:

It was a Sunday afternoon, much like this, when I first met Germaine. I was strolling along the Boulevard Beaumarchais, rich by a hundred francs or so which my wife had frantically cabled from America. There was a touch of spring in the air, a poisonous, malefic spring that seemed to burst from the manholes. Night after night I had been coming back to this quarter, attracted by certain leprous streets which only revealed their sinister splendor when the light of day had oozed away and the whores commenced to take up their posts. The Rue du Pasteur-Wagner is one I recall in particular, corner of the Rue Amelot which hides behind the boulevard like a slumbering lizard. Here, at the neck of the bottle, so to speak, there was always a cluster of vultures who croaked and flapped their dirty wings, who reached out with sharp talons and plucked you into a doorway. Jolly, rapacious devils who didn't even give you time to button your pants when it was over. Led you into a little room off the street, a room without a window usually, and, sitting on the edge of the bed with skirts tucked up gave you a quick inspection, spat on your cock, and placed it for you. While you washed yourself another one stood at the door and, holding her victim by the hand, watched nonchalantly as you gave the finishing touches to your toilet.

Germaine was different. There was nothing to tell me so from her appearance. Nothing to distinguish her from the other trollops who met each afternoon and evening at the Cafe de l'Elephant. As I say, it was a spring day and the few francs my wife had scraped up to cable me were jingling in my pocket. I had a sort of vague premonition that I would not reach the Bastille without being taken in tow by one of these buzzards. Sauntering along the boulevard I had noticed her verging toward me with that curious trot-about air of a whore and the run-down heels and cheap jewelry and the pasty look of their kind which the rouge only accentuates. It was not difficult to come to terms with her. We sat in the back of the little tabac called L'Elephant and talked it over quickly. In a few minutes we were in a five franc room on the Rue Amelot, the curtains drawn and the covers thrown back. She didn't rush things, Germaine. She sat on the bidet soaping herself and talked to me pleasantly about this and that; she liked the knickerbockers I was wearing. Tres chic! she thought. They were once, but I had worn the seat out of them; fortunately the jacket covered my ass. As she stood up to dry herself, still talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it. There was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust that rose­bush under my nose which remains unforgettable; she spoke of it as if it were some extraneous object which she had acquired at great cost, an object whose value had increased with time and which now she prized above everything in the world. Her words imbued it with a peculiar fragrance; it was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a magic, potent treasure, a God-given thing - and none the less so because she traded it day in and day out for a few pieces of silver. As she flung herself on the bed, with legs spread wide apart, she cupped it with her hands and stroked it some more, murmuring all the while in that hoarse, cracked voice of hers that it was good, beautiful, a treasure, a little treasure. And it was good, that little pussy of hers! That Sunday afternoon, with its poisonous breath of spring in the air, everything clicked again. As we stepped out of the hotel I looked her over again in the harsh light of day and I saw clearly what a whore she was - the gold teeth, the geranium in her hat, the run­down heels, etc., etc. Even the fact that she had wormed a dinner out of me and cigarettes and taxi hadn't the least dis­turbing effect upon me. I encouraged it, in fact. I liked her so well that after dinner we went back to the hotel again and took another shot at it. "For love," this time. And again that big, bushy thing of hers worked its bloom and magic. It began to have an independent existence - for me too. There was Germaine and there was that rose-bush of hers. I liked them separately and I liked them together.

As I say, she was different, Gennaine. Later, when she discovered my true circumstances, she treated me nobly - ­blew me to drinks, gave me credit, pawned my things, intro­duced me to her friends, and so on. She even apologized for not lending me money, which I understood quite well after her maquereau had been pointed out to me. Night after night I walked down the Boulevard Beaumarchais to the little tabac where they all congregated and I waited for her to stroll in and give me a few minutes of her precious time.

When some time later I came to write about Claude, it was not Claude that I was thinking of but Germaine ... "All the men she's been with and now you, just you, and barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys behind you and after you, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you." That was for Germaine! Claude was not the same, though I admired her tremendously - I even thought for a while that I loved her. Claude had a soul and a conscience; she had refinement, too, which is bad - in a whore. Claude always imparted a feeling of sadness; she left the impression, unwittingly, of course, that you were just one more added to the stream which fate had ordained to destroy her. Unwittingly, I say, because Claude was the last person in the world who would consciously create such an image in one's mind. She was too delicate, too sensitive for that. At bottom, Claude was just a good French girl of average breed and intelligence whom life had tricked somehow; something in her there was which was not tough enough to withstand the shock of daily experience. For her were meant those terrible words of Louis-Philippe, "and a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have closed upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat hangs upon our bodies, as though it had been masticated by every mouth." Germaine, on the other hand, was a whore from the cradle; she was thoroughly satisfied with her role, enjoyed it in fact, except when her stomach pinched or her shoes gave out, little surface things of no account, nothing that ate into her soul, nothing that created torment. Ennui! That was the worst she ever felt. Days there were, no doubt, when she had a bellyful, as we say - but no more than that! Most of the time she enjoyed it - or gave the illusion of enjoying it. It made a difference, of course, whom she went with - or came with. But the principal thing was a man. A man! That was what she craved. A man with some­thing between his legs that could tickle her, that could make her writhe in ecstasy, make her grab that bushy twat of hers with both hands and rub it joyfully, boastfully, proudly, with a sense of connection, a sense of life. That was the only place where she experienced any life - down there where she clut­ched herself with both hands.

Germaine was a whore all the way through, even down to her good heart, her whore's heart which is not really a good heart but a lazy one, an indifferent, flaccid heart that can be touched for a moment, a heart without reference to any fixed point within, a big flaccid whore's heart that can detach itself for a moment from its true center. However vile and circum­scribed was that world which she had created for herself, nevertheless she functioned in it superbly. And that in itself is a tonic thing. When, after we had become we had become well acquainted, her companions would twit me, saying that I was in love with Germaine (a situation almost inconceivable to them), I would say; "Sure! Sure, I'm in love with her! And what's more, I'm going to be faithful to her!" A lie, of course, because I could no more think of loving Germaine than I could think of loving a spider; and if I was faithful, it was not to Germaine but to that bushy thing she carried between her legs. Whenever I looked at another woman I thought immediately of Germaine, of that flaming bush which she had left in my mind and which seemed imperishable. It gave me pleasure to sit on the terrasse of the little tabac and observe her as she plied her trade, observe her as she resorted to the same grimaces, the same tricks, with others as she had with me. "She's doing her job!" - that's how I felt about it, and it was with approbation that I regarded her transactions. Later, when I had taken up with Claude, and I saw her night after night sitting in her accus­tomed place, her round little buttocks chubbily ensconced in the plush settee, I felt a sort of inexpressible rebellion toward her; a whore, it seemed to me, had no right to be sitting there like a lady, waiting timidly for someone to approach and all the while abstemiously sipping her chocolat. Germaine was a hustler. She didn't wait for you to come to her - she went out and grabbed you. I remember so well the holes in her stock­ings, and the torn ragged shoes; I remember too how she stood at the bar and with blind, courageous defiance threw a strong drink down her stomach and marched out again. A hustler! Perhaps it wasn't so pleasant to smell that boozy breath of hers, that breath compounded of weak coffee, cognac, aperitifs, Pernods and all the other stuff she guzzled between times, what to warm herself and what to summon up strength and courage, but the fire of it penetrated her, it glowed down there between her legs where women ought to glow, and there was established that circuit which makes one feel the earth under his legs again. When she lay there with her legs apart and moaning, even if she did moan that way for any and everybody, it was good, it was a proper show of feel­ing. She didn't stare up at the ceiling with a vacant look or count the bedbugs on the wallpaper; she kept her mind on her business, she talked about the things a man wants to hear when he's climbing over a woman. Whereas Claude - well, with Claude there was always a certain delicacy, even when she got under the sheets with you. And her delicacy offended. Who wants a delicate whore! Claude would even ask you to turn your face away when she squatted over the bidet. All wrong! A man, when he's burning up with passion, wants to see things; he wants to see everything, even how they make water. And while it's all very nice to know that a woman has a mind, literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed. Germaine had the right idea: she was ignorant and lusty, she put her heart and soul into her work. She was a whore all the way through - and that was her virtue!

– Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1934 (London: Panther Books, 1965): 48-54.

Critical Responses:

"American literature begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done." - Lawrence Durrell.

"Tropic of Cancer is not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity." - Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno.

"The tone of the book is undoubtedly low; The Tropic of Cancer, in fact, from the point of view both of its happening and of the language in which they are conveyed, is the lowest book of any real literary merit that I ever remember to have read." - Edmund Wilson.

Tropic of Cancer (1970)
directed by Joseph Strick
screenplay by Betty Botley
starring Rip Torn, Ellen Burstyn & Gisele Grimm

Critical Responses:

"In order to appreciate Henry Miller's style, it is essential to get a feel for the juxtaposition of his elegant, often heartfelt prose, and the profane nature of his subject matter. He is the modern Catullus, the poet not of "lovemaking" but of the joys of flat-out *****ing.

The movie had difficulty synthesizing this sense of sacred and profane in harmony. It tried now with a Rip Torn overvoice reading from Miller's work, then with some poetic shots of the beauty of Paris. It never really seemed to succeed.

The movie could never find anything to focus on. It represents a string of vignettes, and they don't seem to lead to any common goal. Many scenes seem to concentrate on the minor characters for much too long, and without apparent purpose. Such picaresque efforts rely on the charm of characterization for impact, and this film has some of that, but not enough. It's structured as if somebody said "let's make a film of Tropic of Cancer" without actually feeling any passion for why they wanted to do that.

It was certainly interesting to see Rip Torn so young and so good-looking, and to see Ellen Burstyn in such a flagrant display of nudity. Some of the locales are accurately evocative, and Torn is reasonably credible in the lead. It is fairly explicit in the sexual scenes, and extremely explicit in its use of language.

You could watch it and not feel you've wasted your time, but be advised that you won't feel much rewarded, either." - Internet Movie Database.

[Henry and June (1990)]

Miller, Henry

[Peter Gowland: Henry Miller]

Henry Valentine Miller
(1891-1980)

Select Bibliography:

works (in chronological order):

Moloch or, This Gentile World (1927 - published 1992)
Crazy Cock (1928-1930 - published 1990)
Tropic of Cancer. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934.
What Are You Going to Do about Alf?. Paris: Printed at author's expense, 1935.
Aller Retour New York. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1935.
Black Spring. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1936.
Max and the White Phagocytes. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938.
Tropic of Capricorn. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1939.
Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters. Vol. I, with Michael Fraenkel, Santurce, Puerto Rico: Carrefour, 1939.
Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters. Vol. II, with Michael Fraenkel, New York: Carrefour, 1941.
Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters complete. New York: Carrefour, 1943.
The Cosmological Eye. New York: New Directions, 1939.
The World of Sex. Chicago: Ben Abramson, Argus Book Shop, 1940.
Under the Roofs of Paris. (originally published as Opus Pistorum). New York: Grove Press, 1941.
The Colossus of Maroussi. San Francisco: Colt Press, 1941.
The Wisdom of the Heart. New York: New Directions, 1941.
Sunday after the War. New York: New Directions, 1944.
Semblance of a Devoted Past. Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1944.
The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America. Houlton, Me.: Bern Porter, 1944.
Echolalia. Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.
Henry Miller Miscellanea. San Mateo, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.
Why Abstract? with Hilaire Hiller and William Saroyan. New York: New Directions, 1945.
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. New York: New Directions, 1945.
Maurizius Forever. San Francisco: Colt Press, 1946.
Remember to Remember. New York: New Directions, 1947.
Into the Night Life. privately published, 1947
The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.
Sexus (Book One of The Rosy Crucifixion). Paris: Obelisk Press, 1949.
The Waters Reglitterized. San Jose, Calif.: John Kidis, 1950.
The Books in My Life. New York: New Directions, 1952.
Plexus (Book Two of The Rosy Crucifixion). Paris: Olympia Press, 1953.
Quiet Days in Clichy. Paris: Olympia Press, 1956.
Recalls and Reflects. New York: Riverside LP RLP 7002/3, 1956.
The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud. New York: New Directions, 1956.
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. New York: New Directions, 1957.
The Red Notebook. Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams, 1958.
Reunion in Barcelona. Northwood, England: Scorpion Press, 1959.
Nexus (Book Three of The Rosy Crucifixion). Paris: Obelisk Press, 1960.
To Paint Is to Love Again. Alhambra, Calif.: Cambria Books, 1960.
Watercolors, Drawings, and "The Angel Is My Watermark". New York: Abrams, 1962.
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird. New York: New Directions, 1962.
Just Wild about Harry. New York: New Directions, 1963.
Greece. With drawings by Anne Poor. New York: Viking Press, 1964.
Insomnia or The Devil at Large. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974.

Biography & Secondary Literature:

"Another Furor over Books." Ohio State University Monthly 55 (December 1963): 8-12.

Ciardi, John. "Tropic of Cancer." Saturday Review 45 (June 1962): 13.

Ferguson, Robert. Henry Miller: A Life. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.

Gifford, James. Ed. The Henry Miller-Herbert Read Letters: 1935-58. Ann Arbor: Roger Jackson Inc., 2007.

Hutchison, Earl R. Tropic of Cancer on Trial: A Case History of Censorship. New York: Grove Press, 1968.

Kincaid, Larry, and Grove Koger. "Tropic of Cancer and the Censors: A Case Study and Bibliographic Guide to the Literature." Reference Services Review 25 (Spring 1997): 31-38, 46.

Moore, Everett T. "Tropic of Cancer (Second Phase)." ALA Bulletin 56 (February 1962): 81-84.

"Obscenity-Evidence Admission of Contemporary Critical Evaluation of Libeled Book." Minnesota Law Review 35 (February 1951): 326-30.

Orwell, George. Inside the Whale. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1940.

Smith, Roger H. "Cops, Counselors and Tropic of Cancer." Publishers Weekly 180 (October 23,1961): 35.

Homepages & Online Information:

Wikipedia entry

[Miller & friend]