Word: tropic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Massachusetts has made some progress since the days when it banned Dreiser's An American Tragedy, but not much. This week, for example, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was banned with no fuss, no hysteria, no monkey-trial shenanigans. It was a reasonable hearing in which reasonable men argued their sides before a reasonable judge. Yet the decision revealed that this is still the commonwealth of the Yahoos, the Grundys and the Comstocks...
Only a very peculiar person would be aroused by a reading of Tropic of Cancer. In a famous (and highly favorable) review of the book, George Orwell called Miller a "Whitman among the corpses," and the phrase nicely conveys the real flavor of the novel. Parts of its are very funny, but in general--especially in sexual passages--Tropic is commenting on the death of the flesh in modern urban society...
...Tropic of Cancer, Miller...
...severely criticized for his hasty action in impounding some copies of poet Alan Ginzberg's beat epic, "Howl." Now, according to the story, Hanrahan is a sadder and a wiser cop. After his unhappy experience with "Howl," he is cautious, and only judges a book like Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in "its total context...
...Parents, not police," should decide in most cases, according to Hanrahan. And Tropic of Cancer may be "hard reading, but it's not obscene...