'Tropic of Cancer' is Published in the United States

In Tropic of Cancer he deals primarily with matters which, while not exactly left out of modern books, are usually slurred over, and in his pages four-letter words are as common as the things they stand for.

Narrator of the story is a penniless, sex-obsessed writer living in Paris, who encounters an extraordinary crew of neurotics, prostitutes, perverts, poets and painters, with many of whom he has sexual relations, meanwhile borrowing money, cadging drinks and exploding into hysterical laughter at the misfortunes of his friends. Miller's prose, with its queer combination of unrestrained rhetoric and dry Yankee humor, the appalling clarity with which he records grotesque doings in dirty bedrooms, the fervor with which he communicates moods of despair and disgust, lift this mess above ordinary pornography.

The distributors of Tropic of Cancer were prosecuted in six American states between 1938 and 1961, before the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the book was not obscene. Meanwhile, the novel Tropic of Cancer, and all of Henry Millers works were banned from entering the United States. In 1961 the ban was lifted; although the work is still deemed "obscene" by the Citizens for Decent Literature.