I was 23 when I packed up my few worldly possessions and left Ontario for the West Coast. I jettisoned everything I could: a futon, 90% of the books I’d accumulated as a Carleton U English Lit major, clothes, a desk, lamps, appliances, my electric Hamer Explorer guitar — you name it, I shunted it. I gave an electronic typewriter to a friend in exchange for a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.
I eventually read the book I had first heard about in a Seinfeld episode called “The Library” (which included this awesome monologue from “Mr. Bookman”). As was the case when I first read Hemingway, I was underwhelmed for the first 100 pages or so. I didn’t know what the big deal was. And then, on page 150 (in my edition), Miller hit his stride and created some of the best-written pages of his generation — in my humble opinion, of course.
When I returned to work this week after the holidays, I had a lot of proofing to do. That reminded me of a section of Miller’s brilliant rant, which I’m pasting here. [Some context: Miller's narrator is referring to working as a proofreader at a newspaper.]
They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which I proofread. Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a life of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli. Nothing touches me, neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions nor wars nor revolutions. I am inoculated against every disease, every calamity, every sorrow and misery. It’s the culmination of a life of fortitude. Seated at my little niche all the poisons which the world gives off each day pass through my hands. Not even a fingernail gets stained. I am absolutely immune. [...] The world can blow up–I’ll be here just the same to put in a comma or a semicolon.
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Not bad for a book that was described as “a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity” by a Pennsylvannia Supreme Court judge.
