I find it amusing that so many postmodernists feel that Henry Miller was a no-talent bum. They complain of Miller's use of the word "cunt" as well as his other expletives, saying they are not used creatively, such as Hollywood uses them today. They say his descriptions of sexual intercourse are dull, lifeless. They say so much more that reflects their own easy cynicism and allegiance to the lowly pissing jackals known as critics.
"Tropic of Capricorn" reflected the world beautifully in the first hundred pages or so. I was fascinated by Miller's job, the way in which he acquired it, his co-workers, and most of all the people he dealt with day to day.
By Miller not giving us pure autobiographies of "the truth and the only the truth", Miller succeeds in giving us an excess of truth. There is an underlying thread in all of his musings; what Robert Anton Wilson called i², e..g., intelligence which is perceiving of itself, knowing itself as unique, perceiving, and capable of creation.
Miller is the type of guy my dad would probably says sits under trees all day. Miller is quite honest in telling us he is this type of guy. What is amazing in "Tropic of Capricorn" is not all the cunts and such, but the explanation by Miller of Miller. He is self-redeeming in this. This is why Henry Miller's writing gets bad reviews—he pisses people off with too clear of meaningful meaningless BS.
As for those people who say that Miller is a lousy writer, George Orwell had this to say of Henry:
"Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."
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