SOURCE: "Tropic of Cancer: The Journal of a 'Year' in the Surreal City," in his Henry Miller: The Major Writings, Schocken Books, 1986, pp. 75-103.

In the following excerpt, Lewis provides an overview of the major themes of Tropic of Cancer.

Henry Miller's first book, Tropic of Cancer, remains startling and unique. The radiant spirit and exuberant anger which Miller projected from the opening sentences of Cancer are as alive now as the day when they were released. Twenty-five years after its first publication in the United States, and half a century after Miller began his final revisions on the manuscript, Cancer is one of the best exemplars of Pound's definition of literature: News that stays news. Many writers have taken advantage of Miller's victories in the war against censorship and suppression, but Miller does not look like a pioneer who is interesting only as a precursor.

In an...