Tropic of Capricorn (novel)

Tropic of Capricorn is a sexually explicit novel by Henry Miller, first published in Paris, 1938. The novel was a sequel to Tropic of Cancer, 1934. The novel is set in 1920s New York, where the narrator 'Henry V. Miller' works in the personel division of the 'Cosmodemonic' telegraph company. Although the narrator's experiences closely parallel Miller's own time in New York working for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he shares the authors name, the novel is not pure autobiography. Miller maintains a (somewhat) ironic distance from his narrator's exaggerated masculinity and racism. Typically of modernist writing, the novel is critical of capitalism and positivism. Industry is portrayed as a chaotic and directionless machine. The novel is also notable for its racism and misogyny. Women are objectified as "cunts" and often portrayed as little more than tools for sexual relief and the narrator riles against ethnic minorities in racist terms (alongside his complaints against the status quo).

It served as the center of an episode in the television comedy program Seinfeld.

See also: Tropic of Capricorn (novel), 1934, 1938, Henry Miller, Literature, Novel, Paris, Seinfeld, Sexually explicit