I haven't seen the movie, but I read the book. After hearing so much about it, I decided to read it and found it to be so overrated. There was nothing erotic depicted in it, just Miller calling women the "C" word for over 200 pages. Not sexy! I'm contemplating reading "Tropic of Capricorn". Has anyone read that one? Is it different or more of the same?
s to the left of me.
s to the right.
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
You read this book in 2010. What you don't realize is, that it was written in1934. (78 years ago) It's a classic, no doubt about it. To help you understand: Not to many years ago, (1963) if you owned this book, you could be thrown in jail. Some background: in 1953, I was a GI, in Japan. I found "Sexus" in a bookstore in Tokyo. I found it amazing. It said sexy things, that no one else said. (At least in the US) I bought "Plexus" and "Nexus", Then "Tropic of Cancer" and Tropic of Capricorn". These were soft cover, bootlegs, full of typos. I mailed them home, a Federal crime in 1953, using APO. (Army Post Office) By chance, I was working in Long Beach, California, in 1963 and knew a book seller, who was put on trial for selling an undercover agent, "Tropic of Cancer". In 1964, the US Supreme Court, found it "Not obscene" and the Grove Press editions could be sold. So.... What you are reading, is a piece of history.
No, I read it back in 1999/2000. Like I said, I had heard so much about this book and finally got around to reading it. I had heard how "sexy" it was, but I didn't find it "sexy", just vulgar. Like I said, it would show Miller picking up a woman (or, as he constantly called her, a "c---"), but nothing was ever mentioned about the encounter. Neither Miller nor any of his male friends is ever shown actually engaging in anything sexual. I can understand the outrage about the language during that era, but not the total scandal that I was expecting.
"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012
Based on your reply, it's safe to assume that you completely missed captainsteroid's point.
shareMerely being a banned work doesn't, of necessity, make it a great work.
'What is an Oprah?'-Teal'c.
Okay, captainsteroid and ethermusic1981, let me see if I can put this into some sort of perspective: for years, I had been watching the 1931 "Frankenstein" and saw that the scene of The Monster with Little Maria in its edited form where The Monster throws his last flower into the lake, then reaches for Little Maria. The movie then cuts to show the villagers dancing at a festival as Little Maria's father walks through the town carrying her wet dead body.
In the Eighties, the scene of Maria's death was reinserted: The Monster reaches for Maria, picks her up, and throws her into the lake. The Monster's body blocks Maria from our view, but we can hear her splashing and gasping until it goes silent. When I saw the unedited footage, I initially thought"THAT was what got everyone upset?" Then I had to remember that the movie was made in the Thirties while I'm looking at it from the POV of a guy in his twenties in the Eighties.
In other words, I am well-aware that this book was written in the Thirties and I read it in recent times. But, before I had read, I kept hearing how sexy and shocking it was. Was it shocking? Yes, from a Thirties perspective. Was it sexy? Not to me. Still think I don't understand? Eh... maybe I don't.
Annoying the world since 1960!
Millennials have no understanding of history and therefore no appreciation of it.
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