Finished: Tropic of Cancer (Miller). I just don't get these books that were supposed to be so great that are just stream of conscious vomitus from the minds of human beings who just were not willing to put the effort in to congeal with society. I don't see why they have to consider themselves "artists" who are far more intelligent than the average human being, and therefore they must shun that status quo, and in the meantime bash America, and live in near poverty and squalor because of their misguided principles and selfish desires. I just don't get it. I guess there is another level of brain that I just don't have, because I don't enjoy this kind of book at all. It's not even the blatant, and most times crude, sexual content of Miller's book that is bothersome. It was actually some of the easiest, most straightforward stuff to understand. It's his ramblings about anything and everything; about his blatant preference to live in poverty and hunger as a struggling writer in Paris rather than have anything to do with America. Was he considered a "deep thinker" who was brilliant enough to postulate about all his theories of mankind, God, materialism, etc? Newsflash...there were lots of "deep thinkers" who didn't run off to 1930's Paris and extol the virtues of the underbelly life they chose over working hard to succeed in America. Of course, the author IS the narrator, and this story is very autobiographical, apparently, so that leaves me little respect for him. And....he DID end up back in the United  States working, finally settling in California and dying there. How about that, hmm. Maybe I'm just the wrong age? Maybe this stuff was considered biblical for people of a different era because no one had ever cut free from the mold and just rambled about their life experiences, good, bad and ugly, in print before? I just don't know! Anyway, I'm so glad to be done with this book.

The only line I'll reference:

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write.

Well, duh, that was obvious!