SOURCE: "The Volcano's Eruption," in his The Mind and Art of Henry Miller, Louisiana State University Press, 1967, pp. 85-109.

In the following excerpt, Gordon discusses the imagery, style, and themes of Tropic of Cancer, arguing that the novel is a documentation of Miller's struggle for self-liberation.

Tropic of Cancer, which came out in 1934, was Miller's first published full length work. He had written several "novels" before this, but those who have read them, including Miller, agree that they lack his essential quality, that they are derived and imitative. Although Tropic of Cancer is not part of the central work which Miller had planned in 1927, it is a kind of spontaneous bursting forth of feeling which had been bottled up for years. It is significant for several reasons, not the least being that it is still one of his most readable books. In Cancer Miller found and developed the...