Tropic of Capricorn (novel)
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Tropic of Capricorn is a sexually explicit novel by Henry Miller, first published in Paris in 1938. The novel was a sequel to Tropic of Cancer, 1934. The novel is set in 1920s New York, where the narrator 'Henry V. Miller' works in the personnel division of the 'Cosmodemonic' telegraph company.
Although the narrator's experiences closely parallel Miller's own time in New York working for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he shares the author's name, the novel is not pure autobiography. Miller maintains a (somewhat) ironic distance from his narrator's exaggerated misogyny and racism.
Typical of modernist writing, the novel is critical of capitalism and positivism. Industry is portrayed as a chaotic and directionless machine. The novel is also notable for passages that, taken in an explicitly literal sense, evoke a feeling racism and misogyny. Women are objectified as "cunts" and often portrayed as little more than tools for sexual relief, and the narrator riles against some ethnic minorities while championing others (alongside his complaints against the status quo). Taken with no regard for the time when the book was written, its protagonist can appear somewhat gruff and backwards. This appearance is in stark and ironic contrast to the character's relative open-mindededness for the period within which the novel is set.
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