Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Capricorn has without a doubt the best opening out of any book I have ever read. Before anything even happens, you already understand the writer and why the book exists. If you do not want to read this book, fine. At least read the first few pages. It is truly worth your while. In truth though, Tropic of Capricorn is not a book. It is something entirely else that should have its own category. Just bear this in mind before reading it.

These are some of the shorter sections that I believe represent the spirit of this masterpiece:

“I remember distinctly how when my mother arrived on a visit she seemed peeved that I was so contented with my new life. She even remarked that I was ungrateful, a remark I never forgot, because then I realized for the first time that to be ungrateful was perhaps necessary and good for one.”

“It was a personal tour in the impersonal world, a man with a tiny trowel in his hand digging a tunnel through the earth to get to the other side. The idea was to tunnel through and find at last the Culebra Cut, the nec plus ultra, of the honeymoon of flesh. And of course there was no end to the digging. The best I might hope for was to get stuck in the dead centre of the earth, where the pressure was strongest and most even all around, and stay stuck there forever. That would give me the feeling of Ixion on the wheel, which is one sort of salvation and not entirely to be sneezed at. On the other hand I was a metaphysician of the instinctivist sort; it was impossible for me to stay stuck anywhere, even in the dead center of the earth. It was most imperative to find and enjoy the metaphysical fuck, and for that I would be obliged to come out on to a wholly new tableland, a mesa of sweet alfalfa and polished monoliths, where the eagles and the vultures flew at random.”

“What is unmentionable is pure fuck and pure cunt; it must be mentioned only in de luxe editions, otherwise the world will fall apart What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse. But fuck, the real thing, cunt, the real thing, seems to contain some unidentified element which is far more dangerous than nitroglycerine. To get an idea of the real thing you must consult a Sears-Roebuck catalogue endorsed by the Anglican Church. On page 23 you will find a picture of Priapus juggling a corkscrew on the end of his weeny; he is standing in the shadow of the Parthenon by mistake; he is naked except for a perforated jock-strap which was loaned for the occasion by the Holy Rollers of Oregon and Saskatchewan.”

“Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.”

“And if they tell you that these things had to be, that things could not have happened otherwise, that France did her best and Germany her best and that little Liberia and little Ecuador and all the other allies also did their best, and that since the war everybody has been doing his best to patch things up or to forget, tell them that their best is not good enough, that we don't want to hear any more this logic of "doing the best one can", tell them we don't want the best of a bad bargain, we don't believe in bargains good or bad, nor in war memorials. We don't want to hear about the logic of events - or any kind of logic. "Je ne parle pas logique," said Montherlant, "je parle generosite." I don't think you heard it very well, since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language; "I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity." That's bad English, as the Queen herself might speak it, but it's clear. Generosity - do you hear? You never practice it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses to the front, or the Salvation Army, is generosity. You think a bonus twenty years too late is generosity; you think a little pension and a wheelchair is generosity; you think if you give a man his old job back it's generosity. You don't know what the fucking war means, you bastards! To be generous is to say Yes before the man even opens his mouth. To say Yes you have to first be a Surrealist or a Dadaist, because you have understood what it means to say No. You can even say Yes and No at the same time, provided you do more than is expected of you. Be a stevedore in the daytime and a Beau Brummel in the night-time. Wear any uniform so long as it's not yours. When you write your mother ask her to cough up a little dough so that you may have a clean rag to wipe your ass with. Don't be disturbed if you see your neighbour going after his wife with a knife: he probably has good reason to go after her, and if he kills her you may be sure he has the satisfaction of knowing why he did it. If you're trying to improve your mind, stop it. There's no improving the mind. Look at your heart and gizzard - the brain is in the heart.”

“I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretences even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something I will invite him in and say "why are you doing this?" And if he says it is because he has to make a living I will honor him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death - it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death throws another cog into the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbour, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to make a living.”

“Because Herr Nagel was the unacknowledged saint which every artist is - the man who is ridiculed because his solutions, which are truly profound, seem too simple for the world. No man wants to be an artist - he is driven to it because the world refuses to recognize his proper leadership. Work meant nothing to me, because the real work to be done was being evaded. People regarded me as lazy and shiftless, but on the contrary I was an exceedingly active individual. Even if it was just hunting for a piece of tail, that was something, and well worthwhile, especially if compared to other forms of activity -such as making buttons or turning screws, or even removing appendixes. And why did people listen to me so readily when I applied for a job? Why did they find me entertaining? For the reason, no doubt, that I had always spent my time profitably. I brought them gifts - from my hours at the public library, from my idle ramblings through the streets, from my intimate experiences with women, from my afternoons at the burlesque, from my visits to the museum and the art galleries. Had I been a dud, just a poor honest bugger who wanted to work his balls off for so much a week, they wouldn't have offered me the jobs they did, nor would they have handed me cigars or taken me to lunch or loaned me money as they frequently did. I must have had something to offer which perhaps unknowingly they prized beyond horsepower or technical ability. I didn't know myself what it was, because I had neither pride, nor vanity, nor envy. About the big issues I was dear, but confronted by the petty details of life I was bewildered. I had to witness this same bewilderment on a colossal scale before I could grasp what it was all about Ordinary men are often quicker in sizing up the practical situation: their ego is commensurate with the demands made upon it: the world is not very different from what they imagine it to be. But a man who is completely out of step with the rest of the world is either suffering from a colossal inflation of his ego or else the ego is so submerged as to be practically non-existent. Herr Nagel had to dive off the deep end in search of his true ego; his existence was a mystery, to himself and to every one else. I couldn't afford to leave things hanging in suspense that way - the mystery was too intriguing. Even if I had to rub myself like a cat against every human being I encountered, I was going to get to the bottom of it. Rub long enough and hard enough and the spark will come!”