Tropic of Cancer

It seems difficult to believe, but I’m having a bit of a hard time slogging through Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” Maybe I’m just not in the mood for it, or the right place in my life. When I was 20, I thought it was brilliant. I read some Miller again when I was about 30, but then I was in much more of an Anais Nin mode. Now a good chunk of it seems like shock for shock’s sake, and more than a little sad. Perhaps it was always that way, and I just couldn’t really perceive the sadness. When I was younger, my affinity for grit, dirt, decay was much stronger. I still like the rough edges of urban spaces, but I know that you can’t live on the edge forever. You stop being edgy and eventually become pathetic. Not that Miller’s brand of promiscuity ever looked attractive to me anyway . . . I’m afraid I’m a little too fastidious to thrill to back-alley acts with Parisian whores (great — now I’m really going to get Googled by freaks).
I’m also a little too fastidious to read “Tropic of Cancer” on the couch at the ballet school, so instead I took a biography of Lincoln with me last night while I waited for Hannah. Ended up sitting out in the hall and nodding off more than a few times. Noticed this morning that the book had won “The Lincoln Prize”, which hardly seemed a surprise at all. I couldn’t seem to find a bio that took the middle-ground on detail, so I erred on the side of too much and now I’m paying for my mistake.
I finished “Dino” last week, a much more interested read than one would expect, and strangely, I find that I now have knowledge of Dean Martin in my head. Knowledge that must be shared. Let me tell you, when you broach the topic of Dean Martin in casual conversation with your peers, here in 2002, you can get some very interesting looks. And then the backing-away thing….