Tropic of Cancer

“Moldorf, multiform and unerring, goes through his roles—clown, juggler, contortionist, priest, lecher, mountebank. The amphitheater is too small. He puts dynamite in it. The audience is drugged. He scotches it.”

This description of Moldorf draws attention to the novel’s interest in social performance, both literal and metaphorical. It also lays the groundwork for Henry’s later claims that “true” art requires a total dissolution of the existing order, even if that dissolution involves figurative explosions.

“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off.”

While describing the pseudo-religious book that he hopes to write, Henry touches on some major parts of his cosmological vision, including the notion that the world is doomed and that things will inevitably improve after it has been destroyed. This is also an example of how he is intentionally positioning himself to become the scribe who records the death of the old world and the birth of a new one.

“It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse all phases of the conflict.”

In this quote, Henry admits that a certain kind of person is drawn to Paris. In his mind, this person is an artist who has accepted the inevitability of a certain amount of pain in life. By comparing Paris to a stage, he draws attention once again to the performative nature of city life, suggesting that residents of urban spaces are constantly “performing” certain identities and social roles.

“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.”

Henry’s ambivalent feelings about Germaine reflect the novel’s own complicated representations of women. He praises Germaine for her energy, self-awareness, and work ethic while simultaneously demeaning her simply because she is a sex worker. His comparison of her to a spider foregrounds his climactic epiphany about the true nature of the universe towards the end of the novel; in that scene, he also compares women to spiders.

“I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!”

This declaration follows a scene in which Carl berates Henry (and all Americans) for being incurably optimistic. Henry’s declaration of total liberation and openness, coupled with his promise to himself that he will live fully in the moment, mirrors the poetry of Walt Whitman, Henry’s American literary idol.

“Slowly the room begins to revolve and one by one the continents slide into the sea; only the woman is left, but her body is a mass of geography.”

In this dreamlike sequence, Henry is at the cinema with his friend Eugene, although it is unclear whether a movie is actually playing. His vision of the world as a woman’s body—and a woman’s body as something that can be mapped—is a significant part of the development of Henry’s cosmological philosophy about the universe. It also reflects many of the novel’s presumptions about gender roles and gendered forms of power.

“The river is still swollen, muddy, streaked with lights. I don’t know what it is rushes up in me at the sight of this dark, swift-moving current, but a great exultation lifts me up, affirms in me the deep wish that is in me never to leave this land.”

This is one of the only examples in the novel of a moment in which Henry has no ambivalence about whether he should remain in Paris; however, it is notable that he cannot identify where his desire to stay originates. This quote also foreshadows the very end of the novel, when the last thing in Paris Henry describes is the river.

“But I don’t ask to go back to America, to be put in double harness again, to work the treadmill. No, I prefer to be a poor man of Europe.”

One of Henry’s harshest criticisms of America is of its fixation on work. Here, even after describing how hungry he is while he is out of work in Paris, he emphasizes that he would rather be in a place where the labor ethic (or lack thereof) is not consistently centered in all aspects of society.

“There is the noise of feet shuffling and seats slamming, the steady, frittering noise of people moving about aimlessly, of people fluttering their programs and pretending to read and then dropping their programs and scuffling under their seats, thankful for even the slightest accident which will prevent them from asking themselves what they were thinking about because if they knew they were thinking about nothing they would go mad.”

The text uses a breathless, run-on sentence to catalogue the activities of the concert attendees at the Salle Gaveau; this kind of catalogue mirrors a notable poetic technique of Walt Whitman. Additionally, the idea that “thinking about nothing” would drive someone crazy speaks to the novel’s more general critique of work and busy-ness. Essentially, the quote suggests that capitalism has corrupted humans’ minds to such an extent that humans cannot take a quiet moment to appreciate art.

“There is something so fantastic, so incongruous about this gallery that one is reminded inevitably of the great spawn of temples which stretch from the Himalayas to the tip of Ceylon, a vast jumble of architecture, staggering in beauty and at the same time monstrous, hideously monstrous because the fecundity which seethes and ferments in the myriad ramifications of design seems to have exhausted the very soil of India itself.”

The photographic gallery Henry is describing belongs to his Indian acquaintance, Kepi. This descriptive method, particularly the use of words like “monstrous” and “fecundity,” is part of the novel’s larger tendency towards otherizing its non-white characters and their cultures.

“As I listen to his tales of America I see how absurd it is to expect of Gandhi that miracle which will deroute the trend of destiny. India’s enemy is not England, but America. India’s enemy is the time spirit, which cannot be turned back.”

Here, Henry reflects on conversations he has had with the visiting disciple of Gandhi. He finds the man’s idealization of American culture troubling and expresses his own belief that progress in the form of modernization will not ultimately improve the world but instead will doom it.

“Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all.”

As part of the epiphany he experiences after the bidet incident, Henry continues to reflect on the many harms caused by modernization. This reflects his fundamental understanding of true progress as nonlinear and nonhierarchical as well as his wish to subvert traditional concepts of betterment, growth, and superiority.

“‘I know it’s lousy now, in America, but just the same…you go queer over here…all these cheap shits sitting on their ass all day bragging about their work and none of them is worth a stinking damn. They’re all failures—that’s why they come over here.’”

Here, Henry quotes Van Norden, who is ranting about Paris. His use of the word “queer” has a double meaning. It can simply be read as suggesting strangeness, but it can also be read as an anti-gay slur that implies laziness or self-deception. It also presents an alternate viewpoint on the question of work ethic in America versus work ethic in Europe (and questions about the importance of work ethic generally).

“Or you could have a secretary for that matter. That’s it—that’s the best solution for a writer. What does a guy want with his arms and legs? He doesn’t need arms and legs to write with. He needs security…peace…protection.”

Carl expresses his anxiety about being with his wealthy lover, Irene, by admitting that he would actually love to be handicapped and cared for by others. This is a starkly different vision of writerly masculinity from the one Henry seems to prefer, for in Henry’s mind, successful male writers are energetic and physically healthy, even bordering on erotic. Carl, however, sees the task of writing as purely intellectual and psychological, even a way to avoid sex entirely.

“‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you found a harmonica inside…or a calendar? But there’s nothing there…nothing at all. It’s disgusting. It almost drove me mad.’”

Van Norden’s description of his lover’s shaved vulva is almost comical in its implications, but it speaks to the deep male fear of women’s bodies expressed throughout the novel. The use of “harmonica” and “calendar” are also linked to themes brought up throughout the text, particularly questions of artistic creation and the idea that time itself might not be entirely reliable.

“You can get over a cunt and work away like a billy goat until eternity; you can go to the trenches and be blown to bits; nothing will create that spark of passion if there isn’t the intervention of a human hand.

As Henry watches Van Norden have passionless, mechanical sex, he reflects on the importance of a “spark” to human relationships; this concept is crucial to vitalism, which is one of the text’s guiding philosophical frameworks. This is also one of several places in the novel in which Henry compares sex to war, specifically trench warfare.

“For the man in the paddock, whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.”

This is one of the novel’s most linguistically sophisticated yet ambivalent comments on capitalism. Miller implies that labor is an artificial social demand that could be destroyed for the betterment of humankind, but it also suggests that even the most menial forms of labor can make workers happy. This uncertainty reflects the many contradictory approaches to political theory that appear not only throughout this novel, but across Miller’s entire body of work.

“I’m not an American any more, nor a New Yorker, and even less a European, or a Parisian. I haven’t any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I’m neither for nor against. I’m a neutral.”

Here, Henry reflects on his rootlessness, equating a solid geographical location and national identity with broader concepts, including material responsibility and ideological commitment.

“I am speaking naturally of that world which is peculiar to big cities, the world of men and women whose last drop of juice has been squeezed out by the machine—the martyrs of modern progress.”

In this moment, Henry explores what makes living in a metropolitan landscape different from living in other types of places. The phrase “last drop of juice” is almost sexual in its implications, again connecting city life to sexual desire. The word “martyrs” is fundamentally religious and suggests that modernization is inherently violent for certain groups of people.

“But in Matisse, in the exploration of his brush, there is the trembling glitter of a world which demands only the presence of the female to crystallize the most fugitive aspirations.”

One of the things Henry most admires about Matisse’s paintings is their idealization of femininity; Matisse’s women, in other words, are very different from the real women Henry encounters in the everyday world. But the fact that women can bring works of art to life is a theme that he clearly hopes to imitate in his own writing.

“Inside the toilet you could take an inventory of their idle thoughts. The walls were crowded with sketches and epithets, all of them jocosely obscene, easy to understand, and on the whole rather jolly and sympathetic. It must have required a ladder to reach certain spots, but I suppose it was worth while doing it even looking at it from just the psychological viewpoint.”

Here, the graffiti inside public toilets provides a chronicle of urban life in modern Paris. Henry enjoys their obscenity, but he emphasizes the fact that they are no less wise and enjoyable for that obscenity. His vision of a graffiti artist climbing a ladder to paint certain images or words recalls Michelangelo’s use of scaffolding to paint the Sistine Chapel in the sixteenth century and suggests that the definition of quality art should be aggressively reconsidered.

“From that he switched back to the Baron de Charlus and then to Kurtz who had gone up the river and got lost. His favorite theme. I liked the way Collins moved against this background of literature continuously; it was like a millionaire who never stepped out of his Rolls Royce.”

While visiting Le Havre with Fillmore and Collins, Henry comes to appreciate Collins’s many references to his own literary heroes. The Baron de Charlus is a character from Marcel Proust’s novel Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27) and is a particularly licentious gay man; Kurtz is the enigmatic central character in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, a man whose forays into a wilderness bereft of civilization’s tempering influences cause him to devolve into an amoral monster devoid of conscience and haunted by the “horror” of what he has become. While these figures are distinct from the ones Henry himself idolizes, they provide a great deal of information about Collins’s own personality and suggest that Henry is not the only one in his social circle to use literature as a means of self-definition.

“I still can’t get out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, thought we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won’t go.”

As Henry moves closer to his final epiphany, he reflects on a fundamental philosophical quandary: the separation of thought and action, of idea and materiality. He argues throughout this section of the text that the two are actually related, and the notion that we can conceal this problematic split between them is one of the worst lies the modern world tells itself.