Another book with a “prestigious” title and merry, as it turned out, content. If this continues, then sooner or later I will start reading the Old Testament in the original language – there is also probably a lot of interesting things hidden there.I read (listened to) Tropic of Cancer in travel around Turkey. Naturally, the tourists were interested in what their instructor was listening to, and they repeatedly drove me into a stupor asking me to tell what the book was about. Far from the first time, I managed to answer them something intelligible.This is a book about mud treatment, I answered the group. Yes, yes, Parisian mud has a very healing effect on the souls of representatives of the creative intelligentsia. For example, she helped a little-known American writer find his own style and gave an alternative value system to replace the “burnt-out” American dream, which, despite all its white teeth, energy and positivity, caused the author only nausea.
At first, the abundance of dirt and the lack of a plot in the book confused me a little. But after a few chapters, I adapted to the atmosphere of satiated vapors of alcohol and sperm, and even partly began to understand the charm and meaning of such a life. Well, Paris, a magical city, showed me another of its faces – lively and unusual.Unfortunately, due to its autobiographical nature, the book is a bit long and I had to “take the last chapters by storm”. But for this I was rewarded with a huge block of the author’s text, where Miller, instead of the already familiar descriptions of his everyday life, gives out a whole bunch of philosophical reasoning.
It’s cool that almost at the same time he lived and worked in France Wodehouse. Unfortunately (or fortunately) he did not live in Paris, but in Le Touquet and, as far as I know, did not contract the “tropic of cancer.” However, only those who sincerely desire it can pick up this sore.The monologues of the Indian Nanantati evoked in me inhuman tenderness. The audiobook reciter delivered a soft Indian accent with inimitable verisimilitude – “I’m not a special trI’m a bully, Enri. I’m not … women anymore. I just hug them and say different words … “The songs of Edith Piaf were used as the musical accompaniment of the audiobook. This is a bit of an anachronism, because. in the early thirties (when Miller lived and wrote in Paris), Edith was not yet known and sang exclusively on the streets. But we will not find fault, especially since the atmosphere of childhood (she lived with her grandmother – the owner of a brothel) and youth Piaf fully corresponded to the spirit of the Tropic of Cancer.
