It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped any one expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? Now and then a friend was converted: it was something to make me puke. I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face. Pealkiri ütleb Simon Reeve´i reisimarsruudi kenasti ära, aga kordame siis üle: Namiibia rannikult läbi Aafrika lõunaosa (Botswana, LAV, Mosambiik), Madagaskarile, järgmine etapp Austraalias, sellest järgmine Lõuna-Ameerika (Tšiili, Argentina, Paraguay, Brasiilia). Kõrbed, Andid, Suur Korallrahu, Uluru jne, jne. Nagu ikka, nii püüab Reeve sellelgi reisil uurida iga piirkonna valupunkte, olgu selleks metsad, mida enam pole või Šveitsi juustuks kaevandatud maapind, halvasti koheldud Austraalia aborigeenid, vaesus ja slummid jne. Gli ho consigliato Henry Miller: mi ero completamente dimenticato di Henry Miller e mi ero completamente dimenticato di consigliarlo al mio amico He is married and has a child, but this doesn’t stop him from having an affair with a coworker named Valeska. Asked to look after the Millers’ child while the wife undergoes an abortion, Valeska and Henry make love surrounded by the dominos they had been using to entertain the kid just an hour before. Miller spends many of his nights carousing with his sex-hungry friend MacGregor. He also has befriended a seventeen year-old kid from Harlem named Curley who has no ethics and will steal from anybody, and who occasionally supplies Miller with spare change. In Tropico del Capricorno ci sono anche citazioni ed omaggi indiretti: Miller è un'omicida come Hemingway, ma più incosciente, perché bambino e puro

I was always believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were slapped the more firmly I believed. / believed - and the rest of the world did not! If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than that. Instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground taken from under your feet. It isn't even treachery, what I have in mind. Treachery is understandable and combatable. No, it is something worse, something less than treachery. It's a negativism that causes you to overreach yourself. You are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. You are seized with a sort of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes about through excess of enthusiasm, through a passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love. The more you reach out towards the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails - that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such things as a skeleton beneath the covering of flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people live. I don't get to hear his stories first hand anymore. I have to buy his books to find out what he has been up to. I miss Henry. He had me gaze upon the greener pastures on the other side of the fence, but he couldn't convince me to jump over and stay over. Every so often, despite his better financial circumstances, I still get a note from him with a plea for a few dollars for old time's sake. I, the dutiful enabling friend, always send him what I can spare. Ho letto Tropico del Capricorno come Henry Miller leggeva i surrealisti francesi: come in un sogno in cui capisco alcune cose di me

About the author

Section I: From beginning to “I walked out by the same door that I had walked in – without as much as a by-your-leave, sir!” We have spoken of the writer as lively-skinned, and this opus reflects this temperament. Miller belches in well-timed prose all his hatred (his wounded love? His modesty?), All his rage, his anger, destroyed the American dream. He pushes his diatribe against human stupidity, the ugliness of an absurd and frenzied American society, taken by an itch of movement so as not to have to think, cannibal, plagued by violence. His prose is a ferment of madness, an apology for dreams in reaction against a civilization unsurprisingly omnipresent with a harmful obsession for perfection.

I was the evil product of an evil soil. If the self were not imperishable, the ‘I’ I write about would have been destroyed long ago. To some this may seem like an invention, but whatever I imagine to have happened did actually happen, at least to me. History may deny it, since I have played no part in the history of my people, but even if everything I say is wrong, is prejudiced, spiteful, malevolent, even if I am a liar and a poisoner, it is nevertheless the truth and it will have to be swallowed. Everything I ever said about Henry Miller is NOT true. I was a senseless child when I read The Tropic of Cancer and I thought he was a machist and so on and you know what? I want to read the freaking Tropic of Cancer again! And now I sole it so I have to buy it again! damn youuuuuuu. But I had the book in Portuguese though and I want to read it in English, so it was not so bad after all.All throughout this book I was thinking about one thing: when was Cancer and when was Capricorn written. The first one was published in 1934, and the second in 1938. Four years made this huge progression – Miller really evolved as a writer, he became more concentrated and maybe a bit humbler. He is still unconventional, but although he's a mad man (I even felt sorry for him, which I think he would hate the most), I've found so much mellowness, wisdom and truth in his words that I found myself having goose skin. He still has neurotic shifts and he writes about so many people, but in the beginning he described as a hypothesis, what would happen if he wrote thousands of stories. Would they collapse, would they kill each other, would a reader die suffocating in overwhelming – ness? Non so se sia possibile leggere o vedere solo capolavori. Forse la mente ha bisogno di scemenze per apprezzare i capolavori, un po' come lo stomaco ha bisogno di junk food per apprezzare l'alta gastronomia. I suppose I should preface this review with a warning. This is an explicit book. This book has full of sex. And this book has no plot.

The journey toward self-discovery continues, with Miller stumbling through the Southwest lost, alone, and in need of Hamilton (who has continued seeking his father). Miller thinks of his own father, a heavy drinker who routinely goes on the wagon, falls ill, and then throws himself headfirst into Christianity. After the minister who originally inspired his conversion leaves for a position in New Rochelle, Miller’s father falls into disillusionment and depression. Miller describes him as a man betrayed, before turning to the example of Grover Watrous, a neighbor who also found God, and remained the most “joyful” person Miller has ever known.If you need a little money I'll raise it for you. It's like throwing it down a sewer, I know, but I'll do it for you just the same. The truth is, Henry, I like you a hell of a lot. I've taken more from you than I would from anybody in the world."