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Smoke (Paul Kelly album)

Smoke is an album by Paul Kelly and Melbourne bluegrass band, Uncle Bill, which was composed of Gerry Hale on guitar, dobro, mandolin, fiddle and vocals, Adam Gare on fiddle, mandolin and vocals, Peter Somerville on banjo and vocals and Stuart Speed on double bass. The album featured a mix of old and new Kelly songs treated in classic bluegrass fashion.

Kelly had previously recorded with Uncle Bill, "Thanks a Lot" for the 1997 compilation, Where Joy Kills Sorrow, on the W.Minc label, and "Sunlander" in 1998 for the Not So Dusty (Slim Dusty) tribute album.

It was released on Kelly's new label, Gawdaggie, through EMI Records in Australia in October 1999 and peaked at #36 on the national chart.

"Our Sunshine" draws upon the story of Ned Kelly's life, in particular the 1991 book by Robert Drewe, Our Sunshine and Ned Kelly: A Short History by Ian Jones.

Smoke won three awards from the Victorian Country Music Association Best Group (Open), Best Group (Victorian), and Album of the Year in 2000.

Track listing
All tracks written by Paul Kelly, except where noted.

Personnel

 * Paul Kelly – vocals, guitar
 * Gerry Hale – guitar, mandolin, fiddle, dobro, lap steel, vocals
 * Adam Gare – mandolin, fiddle, vocals
 * Peter Somerville – banjo, vocals
 * Stuart Speed – double bass, vocals

Credits

 * Produced by Paul Kelly and Gerry Hale
 * Mixed by Simon Polinski
 * Assisted by Christian Scallon & Adam Rhodes
 * Mastered by Ross Cockle
 * Design & Photography - Ben Cunningham
 * Cover Art by Reg Mombassa

title: Smoke (Paul Kelly album)


text:
Purple-faced langur

The purple-faced langur (Semnopithecus vetulus), also known as the purple-faced leaf monkey, is a species of Old World monkey that is endemic to Sri Lanka. The animal is a long-tailed arboreal species, identified by a mostly brown appearance, dark face (with paler lower face) and a very shy nature. The species was once highly prevalent, found in suburban Colombo and the "wet zone" villages (areas with high temperatures and high humidity throughout the year, whilst rain deluges occur during the monsoon seasons), but rapid urbanization has led to a significant decrease in the population level of the monkeys. It had traditionally been classified within the genus Trachypithecus but was moved to the genus Semnopithecus based on DNA evidence indicating that is it more closely related to the gray langurs.

In Sinhala, it is known as ශ්‍රී ලංකා කළු වඳුරා [kʌlu vʌⁿðura] (Sri Lanka black monkey).

Description
In the purple-faced langur, males are usually larger than females. Males measure 50 to 67.1 cm in head-body length with a tail of 67 to 85.1 cm. Females possess a head-body length 44.7 to 60 cm and tail length of 58.9 to 82 cm. The pelage may generally vary from blackish to grayish. The species tends to have whitish to gray short 'trousers' rounded off by purplish-black faces with white sideburns. Part of the back is covered with whitish fur, and tail is also furred with black and white mixed colors. The feet and hands are also purplish-black in color. Size varies among the subspecies. Typically adults will weigh somewhere between 3.1 and 11.4 kg, averaging about 7.08 kg. The smallest subspecies (S. v. nestor) commonly weighs between 3.8 and 6 kg. Average weight from other subspecies has been recorded up to 7.8 kg in females and 8.5 kg in males with some exceptionally big langurs weighing up to perhaps 18 kg. Among the primates that live in Sri Lanka, it is somewhat smaller than the tufted gray langur despite leading males of the group of purple-faced langurs often being larger than the tufted gray langur that lived together in the habitats. In the subspecies known as the "bear monkey" (S. v. monitcola) usually has a darker coat and usually sports a heavy mustache. In this species, the hair of crown directed backwards throughout, not radiating. it lacks the crest of tufted gray langurs and has hair on the crown no longer than on temples and nape. Purple-faced langurs have a rump that is pure white or whitish gray.

Subspecies
According to the Mammals of Sri Lanka, the 4 subspecies are recognized as follows.
 * Southern lowland wetzone purple-faced langur, Semnopithecus vetulus vetulus – "Color varies greatly. Black upper torso, light brown cap, well defined silvery rump patch that extends to legs. Prominent white whiskers. Tail is also white colored. Many white morphs are observed in this subspecies. They can be all-white to partly white leucistic."
 * Western purple-faced langur or north lowland wetzone purple-faced langur, Semnopithecus vetulus nestor – "It is the smallest of all subspecies. Upper torso dark grayish brown with light grayish brown rump patch, darker grayish brown legs and white cap."
 * Dryzone purple-faced langur, Semnopithecus vetulus philbricki – "Largest subspecies. Grayish brown torso, ill-defined grayish rump patch, dark cap. Prominent white cheeks with tufts. Exceptionally long slimy tail."
 * Montane purple-faced langur or Bear Monkey, Semnopithecus vetulus monticola – "Dark gray brown coat. Large but ill-defined grayish rump patch. Prominent white cheek tufts, light brownish gray cap. Fur long and shaggy due to habitat they live is cold."

All four recognizable subspecies exhibit different cranial and pelage characteristics, as well as body size. The western purple-faced langur is one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world. Most groups of langurs contain only one adult male.

A possible subspecies called Semnopithecus vetulus harti is recognized, but not yet given validity. This subspecies is known from some skins found from Jaffna peninsula and north of the Vavuniya. Uniquely, this subspecies has yellowish golden hair on its scalp and a golden sheen to its fur. Other than these differences, anatomy and all the other aspects are similar to the Semnopithecus vetulus philbricki.

Although traditionally classified within the genus Trachypithecus based on morphological similarities, DNA and vocal evidence suggests that the purple-faced langur actually is more closely related to the gray langurs of the genus Semnopithecus.

Habitat and status
The purple-faced langur is found in closed canopy forests in Sri Lanka's mountains and the southwestern part of the country, known as the "wet zone". Only 19% of Sri Lanka consists of forested areas. This habitat has decreased from 80% in 1980 to ~25% in 2001. Currently, this range has decreased to below 3%. The range consists of the most densely populated lowland rainforest areas of Sri Lanka. Deforestation has resulted in the langurs home ranges to be exposed to direct sunlight. Purple-faced langurs are most often found in small and widely scattered groups. Ninety percent of the langurs range, now consists of human populated areas. Populations are critically low within and between sites. Threats to this species include infringement on range by croplands, grazing, changing agriculture, road production, soil loss/erosion and deforestation, poisoning from prevention of crop raiding, and hunting for medicine and food.

Its range has constricted greatly in the face of human encroachment, although it can still be seen in Sinharaja, Kitulgala, Kandalama, Mihintale, in the mountains at Horton Plains National Park or in the rainforest near the city of Galle.

Diet
The purple-faced langur is mostly folivorous, but will also feed on fruits, flowers, and seeds. While they normally avoid human habitations, fruit such as jak (Artocarpus heterophyllus), rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), banana (Musa balbisiana), and mango (Mangifera indica) may contribute up to 50% to their diet in cultivated areas. In the wild, food such as the fruits of Dimocarpus longan and Drypetes sepiaria are taken. Purple-faced langur digestion is adapted to derive the majority of required nutrients and energy from complex carbohydrates found in leaves, with the help of specialized stomach bacteria. Where the species' diet is currently heavily dependent cultivated fruits, the ability to derive sufficient nutrition may become impaired. Seasonal availability of fruit may serve to increase this effect.

Semnopithecus vetulus feed on a less diverse diet than S. priam, with a greater proportion of leaves. Food plants that have been identified include Holoptelea integrifolia, Hydnocarpus venenata, Macaranga peltata, Manilkara hexandra, Mikania scandens, Mischodon zeylanica, Pterospermum suberifolium, Tetrameles nudiflora, Vitex altissima, and Wrightia angustifolia. The purple-faced langur was found to be dominated by tufted gray langurs in mixed feeding groups.

Communication
Loud calls are often used to distinguish between individual purple-faced langurs. The elements of a call fall into three categories: harsh barks, whoops, and residuals. Individuals can be differentiated by the number of phrases and residuals within a call. Calls occur more often in the morning mostly stimulated by neighboring groups and territorial battles. More calls occur during sunny periods than cloudy. The fewest calls occur in the evening. Daytime calls usually aid in the defense of home ranges. The loud barking call, particularly of the highland form, can be mistaken for the roar of a predator such as a leopard. Calls of the purple-faced langur differ from those of any of the subspecies. Environmental characters impact call times as well as anthropogenic disturbance. Vocalization can be used to alert members of predators, attract mates, defend territory, and locate group members. Vocalization is extremely important for the use in conservation especially because they are very difficult to observe directly. Adult males are the most vocal among the entire group. Defensive whooping calls are also accompanied by intense visual and locomotive displays. Vocalizations are also helpful in determining taxonomic identification. Based on alarm calls issued in response to these and known predators of the similar tufted gray langur, the main potential predators of this species are likely to be leopards followed infrequently perhaps by Indian pythons and mugger crocodile. For young or infirm langurs, black eagles, spot-bellied eagle-owls and possibly other larger birds of prey are perhaps not infrequently a threat. Monitor lizards may also feed on purple-faced langurs (possibly through scavenging or picking off the young or sickly).

Conservation
Some conservation strategies consist of improving management of the already protected areas as well as locate and protect new areas and corridors within ranges. Efforts to help increase populations may help survival. It would be beneficial to lower human-langur conflicts. Rope bridges could be established for langurs to move between ranges safely, which may decrease the crossing of power lines and roads. Replanting pine plantations with native species exploited by these langurs, could possibly increase its preferred habitat as well. Public education of conservation to the local people emphasizing compassion and kindness as well as explaining the importance and necessity of these mammals to the ecosystems overall biodiversity.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Purple-faced langur


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Girl power

Girl power is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women's empowerment, independence, confidence and strength. The slogan's invention is credited to the US punk band Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Bikini Kill #2: Girl Power in 1991. It was then popularized in the mainstream by the British girl group Spice Girls in the mid-1990s. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Spice Girls' usage of "girl power" was one of the defining cultural touchstones that shaped the Millennial generation, particularly during their childhood in the 1990s.

Early usage and origins

In 1990, US punk band Bikini Kill started to make their self-titled feminist zine. Its first issue had the subtitle, A color and activity book. A year later the band published the second issue of their Bikini Kill zine, with the new subtitle Girl Power. The band's lead singer, Kathleen Hanna, said it was inspired by the Black Power slogan. The authors of Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change argue that the term also draws inspiration from 80s Black female, hip hop vernacular, "You go girl".

The term became popular in the early and mid 90s punk culture. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll credits the zine with coining the slogan: "In their feminist fanzine Bikini Kill they articulated an agenda for young women in and outside of music; the band put those ideas to practice. Bikini Kill earned a reputation in the punk underground for confronting certain standards of that genre; for example, asking people to slam at the side of the stage, so that women would not get pushed out of the front, and inviting women to take the mic and talk about sexual abuse."

The phrase is sometimes sensationally spelled "grrrl power", based on the spelling of "riot grrrl".

Some other musical artists who have used the slogan in their music are Welsh band Helen Love, with it appearing in the chorus of their 1992 song "Formula One Racing Girls", and pop-punk duo Shampoo, who released an album and single titled Girl Power in 1995.

Spice Girls
British pop quintet Spice Girls brought the mantra into the mainstream consciousness in the mid-1990s. The Spice Girls' version of "girl power" focused on the importance of strong and loyal friendship among females, with a message of empowerment that appealed to young girls, adolescents and adult women. According to Billboard magazine, they demonstrated real, noncompetitive female friendship, singing: "If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends. Make it last forever; friendship never ends."

In all, the focused, consistent presentation of "girl power" formed the centrepiece of their appeal as a band. Some commentators credit the Spice Girls with reinvigorating mainstream feminism in the 1990s, with the "girl power" mantra serving as a gateway to feminism for their young fans. On the other hand, some critics dismissed "girl power" as no more than a shallow marketing tactic, while others took issue with the emphasis on physical appearance, concerned about the potential impact on self-conscious and/or impressionable youngsters: As American feminist Jennifer Pozner famously remarked, it was "probably a fair assumption to say that a 'zig-a-zig-ah' is not Spice shorthand for 'subvert the dominant paradigm. Regardless, the phrase became a cultural phenomenon, adopted as the mantra for millions of girls and even making it into the Oxford English Dictionary. In summation of the concept, author Ryan Dawson said, "The Spice Girls changed British culture enough for Girl Power to now seem completely unremarkable."

In 2018, Rolling Stone named the Spice Girls' brand of "girl power" on The Millennial 100, a list of 100 people, music, cultural touchstones and movements that have shaped the Millennial generation.

Scholarship
In her 2002 book Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture, Susan Hopkins suggested a correlation between "girl power", Spice Girls, and female action heroes at the end of the 20th century. A later book, Growing Up With Girl Power, by Rebecca Hains (2012) found that the phrase "girl power" and the media associated with it—such as the Spice Girls and girl heroes—diluted the phrase's impact from the riot grrrls' intent, making it more about marketing and selling the idea of empowerment than about furthering girls' actual empowerment.

The slogan has also been examined within the context of the academic field, for example Buffy studies. Media theorist Kathleen Rowe Karlyn in her article "Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism's Third Wave: I'm Not My Mother" and Irene Karras in "The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer" suggest a link with third-wave feminism. Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy in the introduction to Athena's Daughters: Television's New Women Warriors, discuss what they describe as a link between girl power and a "new" image of women warriors in popular culture.

Oxford English Dictionary
A 2001 update to the Oxford English Dictionary defined "girl power" as:

"Power exercised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism. Although also used more widely (esp. as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent 'riot girl' movement in the United States (cf. RIOT GIRL n.); then, in the late 1990s, with the British all-female group The Spice Girls."

The dictionary further offers an example of this term by quoting from "Angel Delight", an article in the March 24, 2001 issue of Dreamwatch about the television series Dark Angel:

"After the Sarah Connors and Ellen Ripleys of the 1980s, the 1990s weren't so kind to the superwoman format—Xena Warrior Princess excepted. But it's a new 2000 millennium now, and while Charlie's Angels and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are kicking up a storm on movie screens, it's been down to James Cameron to bring empowered female warriors back to television screens. And tellingly, Cameron has done it by mixing the sober feminism of his Terminator and Aliens characters with the sexed-up girl power of a Britney Spears concert. The result is Dark Angel."

Criticism
The communications scholar Debbie Ging was critical of the "girl power" ideals, and linked it to the sexualisation of younger children, girls in particular.

The sociologist Amy McClure warns against placing too much hope on girl power as an empowering concept. She says, "An ideology based on consumerism can never be a revolutionary social movement. The fact that it appears to be a revolutionary movement is a dangerous lie that not only marketers sell to us but that we often happily sell to ourselves." Rebecca Hains also criticized mainstream "girl power" for its commercial function, arguing in Women's Studies in Communication that it "undermines true work towards equality, serving corporate interests at the expense of girls' personal interests," and called it an "updated version of 'commodity feminism.'"

Despite the term's origins in Black Power and Black hip hop, Raisa Alvarado argues that the Girl Power movement "disproportionately centers white, middle and upper class girls." Further, Alvarado claims that "the ethos of girl power discourses, as propagated in popular culture... promote whiteness via neoliberal, postfeminist, and postrace representations of empowered girlhood." Young Femininity authors Sinikka Aapola, Marnina Gonick, Jo Campling, and Anita Harris note that the Girl Power movement "appropriat[es]... images and discourses of black women's strength, power and agency to serve a mainly white middle-class young women" agenda.

Media and toys can present a narrow definition of what it means to be a girl, such as Mattel's Barbie. The "I can be" Barbie embodied this concept of "girl power": that little girls can be anything they want when they grow up. Arguably, Barbie's image also presents narrow options with which girls can identify, limiting the potential of any "girl power"-themed line.

In addition to concerns about girl power's implications for girls, some critics questioned its use by women. For example, Hannah Jane Parkinson of The Guardian criticized the term "girl power" as something "young women [that] are feeling more confident about calling themselves feminists and standing up for principles of equality" hide behind. She denounced the phrase for including the word "girl", claiming it encouraged the application of the term "girl" to adult women.

title: Girl power


text: Category:Latvian footballers

title: Category:Latvian footballers


text:
Huang Qi

Huang Qi (, born 1963) is a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist from Sichuan. He is the co-founder of Tianwang Center for Missing Persons (later renamed the Tianwang Human Rights Center), along with his wife Zeng Li. Initially the mission of the organization was to help counter human trafficking that had become a swelling problem in the late 1990s, but later it was expanded to include campaign against human rights abuse. Huang is also the owner and webmaster of 64tianwang.com, a website originally intended to release news about people who had disappeared in the People's Republic of China.

Huang was imprisoned by the government from June 2000 to June 2005 and again arrested in July 2008 for "illegal possession of state secrets" after he helped the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. In November 2009 he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. He was subsequently described as a political prisoner; Amnesty International described him as a victim of vague state secrets laws. Huang was sentenced to twelve years in prison in July 2019 for leaking state secrets to foreigners.

Website
Huang and his wife, Zeng Li, from Chengdu, Sichuan, set up the website www.64tianwang.com in June 1998 to track cases of human trafficking by posting information about missing people. Huang managed the site, helped to decide on its content, and actively investigated cases, ultimately aiding in the rescue of several trafficked girls. He continued to post articles exposing cases of people exploited by government officials until late 2000; this included the custodial death of a 15-year-old boy and another case of a follower of Falun Gong. The police tried to shut down his website, but Huang moved his website to servers in the United States.

Huang was arrested in late 2000 under the charges of "inciting subversion" and sentenced to five years in prison. Soon after his release in 2005, he resumed posting similar content on his website as he did before the arrest, until June 2008, when he was arrested again under the charges of "illegal possession of state secrets" after he posted an article on behalf of parents of school children who had died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, demanding an investigation into the schools’ construction.

Reporters Without Borders awarded its Cyber-Freedom Prize to Huang Qi in 2004.

Early 2000s
Huang was arrested on June 3, 2000—the day before the 11th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989—accused of posting on his website articles about the protests written by dissidents living abroad. The website was used by the independence movement in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and the Falun Gong.

He was jailed in July 2000 at the Detention Center No. 1 in Chengdu. Former cellmates said he was beaten regularly and denied medicine he needed. Huang was ultimately tried for "subversion" in August 2001. He was charged under articles 103, 105, 55 and 56 of the Criminal Law and tried in secret by the Chengdu Intermediate Court in August 2001. He was detained without sentencing until May 9, 2003, when he was sentenced to five years in prison. Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience "imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and association" and called for his immediate release.

On June 4, 2005, Huang Qi was released from jail after completing his sentence. He told Radio Free Asia that he wanted to resume his web site dedicated to the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. "I will do my best to resume the Tianwang Web site. When it was first created it was for very few people. But I now realize that there are many like-minded people," he said.

Sichuan earthquake affair
After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he assisted in relief work and also responded to some parents' requests for assistance in their questions and complaints concerning the collapse of school buildings. Huang posted their demands as an article on his website. A week later, on June 10, plain-clothed policemen arrested him in Chengdu and held him "on suspicion of illegally possessing state secrets", an ill-defined charge often used by the Chinese government to clamp down on dissents. A formal announcement of his arrest was made on July 18, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in November 2009 based on the discovery of two city-level documents in his house. The court was heavily guarded by police with only Huang's wife and mother allowed to enter, Huang's lawyers were unable to attend because of short notice given. Huang is expected to appeal against the verdict and has been refused bail.

Human Rights organizations condemned the verdict and "inhumane treatment" of Huang in prison. Amnesty International alleges that during his detention Huang was interrogated for long periods and subject to sleep deprivation. Huang's family have said that his health has deteriorated rapidly in detention and that he has not received adequate medical care. One of his lawyers has stated that he has been diagnosed with two tumours, one in the stomach and one in the chest, during his period in detention. Earlier on November 7, the U.S. House of Representatives had passed a near-unanimous resolution seeking freedom of activists Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren.

Following Huang's imprisonment, fellow human rights activist and pundit Liu Dan authored a piece on Huang's Tianwang website condemning Chinese President Hu Jintao's Harmonious Society ideology, saying that it was a "sham" in the face of Huang Qi's sentencing. Liu wrote that Hu's administration silences anyone whose opinions differ from the party line, whether that opinion is coming from external elements (censorship of dissidents), foreign elements (deletion of U.S. President Barack Obama's town-hall meeting from news items), or within the Chinese political system itself (removal of Premier Wen Jiabao's calls for greater freedoms in Xinhua publications). Huang was released in 2011 after completing his sentence.

2016–2019
On November 28, 2016, Huang was detained after police raided his home. On December 7, a petitioner told Radio Free Asia that Huang has been detained at Mianyang City Detention in Sichuan Province but Huang's mother also went missing. Several days later, on December 16, Huang's mother has returned home and Huang has been formally arrested for "leaking state secrets".

In January 2019 Huang was put on trial at the Intermediate People's Court of Mianyang City in Sichuan, accused of leaking state secrets. On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Huang had been found guilty of intentionally leaking state secrets to foreigners, and had been sentenced to twelve years in prison, as well as being deprived of his political rights for four years, and fined 20,000 yuan. Huang has kidney and heart disease, and Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, noted that "[t]his decision is equivalent to a death sentence, considering Huang Qi's health has already deteriorated from a decade spent in harsh confinement".

title: Huang Qi


text:
Tropic of Cancer (novel)

Tropic of Cancer is an autobiographical novel by Henry Miller that is best known as "notorious for its candid sexuality", with the resulting social controversy considered responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the United States. Its publication in 1961 in the United States by Grove Press led to obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography in the early 1960s. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the book non-obscene. It is regarded as an important work of 20th-century literature.

Writing and publication
"I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead."

Miller wrote the book between 1930 and 1934 during his "nomadic life" in Paris. The fictional Villa Borghese was actually 18 Villa Seurat in Paris' 14th arrondissement. As Miller discloses in the text of the book, he first intended to title it "Crazy Cock". Miller gave the following explanation of why the book's title was Tropic of Cancer: "It was because to me cancer symbolizes the disease of civilization, the endpoint of the wrong path, the necessity to change course radically, to start completely over from scratch."

Anaïs Nin helped to edit the book. In 1934, Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press published the book with financial backing from Nin, who had borrowed the money from Otto Rank.

Emerson quotation, preface, and introduction
In the 1961 edition, opposite the novel's title page is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies—captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly."

The 1961 edition includes an introduction by Karl Shapiro written in 1960 and titled "The Greatest Living Author". The first three sentences are:

"I call Henry Miller the greatest living author because I think he is. I do not call him a poet because he has never written a poem; he even dislikes poetry, I think. But everything he has written is a poem in the best as well as in the broadest sense of the word."

Following the introduction is a preface written by Nin in 1934, which begins as follows:

"Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium."

Summary
Set in France (primarily Paris) during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tropic of Cancer centers on Miller's life as a struggling writer. Late in the novel, Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself, stating:

"Up to the present, my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium."

Combining autobiography and fiction, some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller's actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces; others are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic. The novel is written in the first person, as are many of Miller's other novels, and does not have a linear organization, but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present.

Themes
The book largely functions as an immersive meditation on the human condition. As a struggling writer, Miller describes his experience living among a community of bohemians in Paris, where he intermittently suffers from hunger, homelessness, squalor, loneliness, and despair over his recent separation from his wife. Describing his perception of Paris during this time, Miller wrote:

"One can live in Paris—I discovered that!—on just grief and anguish. A bitter nourishment—perhaps the best there is for certain people. At any rate, I had not yet come to the end of my rope. I was only flirting with disaster. ... I understood then why it is that Paris attracts the tortured, the hallucinated, the great maniacs of love. I understood why it is that here, at the very hub of the wheel, one can embrace the most fantastic, the most impossible theories, without finding them in the least strange; it is here that one reads again the books of his youth and the enigmas take on new meanings, one for every white hair. One walks the streets knowing that he is mad, possessed, because it is only too obvious that these cold, indifferent faces are the visages of one's keepers. Here all boundaries fade away and the world reveals itself for the mad slaughterhouse that it is. The treadmill stretches away to infinitude, the hatches are closed down tight, logic runs rampant, with bloody cleaver flashing."

There are many passages explicitly describing the narrator's sexual encounters. In 1978, literary scholar Donald Gutierrez argued that the sexual comedy in the book was "undeniably low... [but with] a stronger visceral appeal than high comedy". The characters are caricatures, and the male characters "stumbl[e] through the mazes of their conceptions of woman".

Music and dance are other recurrent themes in the book. Music is used "as a sign of the flagging vitality Miller everywhere rejects". References to dancing include a comparison of loving Mona to a "dance of death", and a call for the reader to join in "a last expiring dance" even though "we are doomed".

Characters
Other than the first-person narrator "Henry Miller", the major characters include:
 * Boris: A friend who rents rooms at the Villa Borghese. The character was modeled after Michael Fraenkel, a writer who "had sheltered Miller during his hobo days" in 1930.
 * Carl: A writer friend who complains about optimistic people, about Paris, and about writing. Miller helps Carl write love letters to "the rich cunt, Irene", and Carl relates his encounter with her to Miller.  Carl lives in squalor and rapes a minor. The inspiration for Carl was Miller's friend Alfred Perlès, a writer.
 * Collins: A sailor who befriends Fillmore and Miller. As Collins had fallen in love with a boy in the past, his undressing a sick Miller to put him to bed has been interpreted as evidence of a homoerotic desire for Miller.
 * Fillmore: A "young man in the diplomatic service" who becomes friends with Miller. He invites Miller to stay with him; later the Russian "princess" Macha with "the clap" joins them.  Fillmore and Miller disrupt a mass while hung over.  Toward the end of the book, Fillmore promises to marry a French woman named Ginette who is pregnant by him, but she is physically abusive and controlling, and Miller convinces Fillmore to leave Paris without her.  Fillmore's real-life counterpart was Richard Galen Osborn, a lawyer.
 * Mona: A character corresponding to Miller's estranged second wife June Miller. Miller remembers Mona, who is now in America, nostalgically.
 * Tania: A woman married to Sylvester. The character was modeled after Bertha Schrank, who was married to Joseph Schrank. It may also be noted that during the writing of the novel, Miller also had a passionate affair with Anais Nin; by changing the "T" to an "S", one can make out Anais from Tania by rearranging the letters. It may also be noted that in one of Nin's many passionate letters to Miller, she quotes his swoon found below. Tania has an affair with Miller, who fantasizes about her:

"O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent."

 * Van Norden: A friend of Miller's who is "probably the most sexually corrupt man" in the book, having a "total lack of empathy with women". Van Norden refers to women using terms such as "my Georgia cunt", "fucking cunt", "rich cunt", "married cunts", "Danish cunt", and "foolish cunts".  Miller helps Van Norden move to a room in a hotel, where Van Norden brings women "day in and out".  The character was based on Wambly Bald, a gossip columnist.

United States
Upon the book's publication in France in 1934, the United States Customs Service banned the book from being imported into the U.S. Frances Steloff sold copies of the novel smuggled from Paris during the 1930s at her Gotham Book Mart, which led to lawsuits. A copyright-infringing edition of the novel was published in New York City in 1940 by "Medusa" (Jacob Brussel); its last page claimed its place of publication to be Mexico. Brussel was eventually sent to jail for three years for the edition.

In 1950, Ernest Besig, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, attempted to import Tropic of Cancer along with Miller's other novel, Tropic of Capricorn, to the United States. Customs detained the novels and Besig sued the government. Before the case went to trial, Besig requested a motion to admit 19 depositions from literary critics testifying to the "literary value of the novels and to Miller's stature as a serious writer". The motion was denied by Judge Louis A. Goodman. The case went to trial with Goodman presiding. Goodman declared both novels obscene. Besig appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, but the novels were once again declared "obscene" in a unanimous decision in Besig v. United States.

In 1961, when Grove Press legally published the book in the United States, over 60 obscenity lawsuits in over 21 states were brought against booksellers that sold it. The opinions of courts varied; for example, in his dissent from the majority holding that the book was not obscene, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno wrote Cancer is "not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity."

Publisher Barney Rosset hired lawyer Charles Rembar to help Rosset lead the "effort to assist every bookseller prosecuted, regardless of whether there was a legal obligation to do so". Rembar successfully argued two appeals cases, in Massachusetts and New Jersey, although the book continued to be judged obscene in New York and other states.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cited Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day) and overruled state court findings that Tropic of Cancer was obscene.

Other countries
The book was banned outside the U.S. as well:
 * In Canada, it was on the list of books banned by customs as of 1938. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized copies of the book from bookstores and public libraries in the early 1960s. By 1964, attitudes toward the book had "liberalized".
 * Only smuggled copies of the book were available in the United Kingdom after its publication in 1934. Scotland Yard contemplated banning its publication in Britain in the 1960s, but decided against the ban because literary figures such as T. S. Eliot were ready to defend the book publicly.
 * In Australia the book was banned until the early 1970s when the Minister for Customs and Excise, Don Chipp, largely ended censorship of printed material in the country.
 * In Finland all printed copies of the Finnish versions of the book were confiscated by the state before the books were to be published in 1962. The book was not published there in Finnish until 1970, however the book was available in Swedish and English.

Individual reviewers
In 1935, H. L. Mencken read the 1934 Paris edition, and sent an encouraging note to Miller: "I read Tropic of Cancer a month ago. It seems to me to be a really excellent piece of work, and I so reported to the person who sent it to me. Of this, more when we meet."

George Orwell reviewed Tropic of Cancer in The New English Weekly in 1935. Orwell focused on Miller's descriptions of sexual encounters, which he deemed significant for their "attempt to get at real facts", and which he saw as a departure from dominant trends. Orwell argued that, although Miller concerns himself with uglier aspects of life, he is nonetheless not quite a pessimist, and seems to find that the contemplation of ugliness makes life more worthwhile rather than less. Concluding, he described Tropic of Cancer as "a remarkable book" and recommended it to "anyone who can get hold of a copy". Returning to the novel in the essay "Inside the Whale" (1940), George Orwell wrote the following:

"I earnestly counsel anyone who has not done so to read at least Tropic of Cancer. With a little ingenuity, or by paying a little over the published price, you can get hold of it, and even if parts of it disgust you, it will stick in your memory. ... Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance...."

Samuel Beckett hailed it as "a momentous event in the history of modern writing". Norman Mailer, in his 1976 book on Miller entitled Genius and Lust, called it "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century, a revolution in consciousness equal to The Sun Also Rises".

Edmund Wilson said of the novel: "The tone of the book is undoubtedly low; The Tropic of Cancer, in fact, from the point of view both of its happenings and of the language in which they are conveyed, is the lowest book of any real literary merit that I ever remember to have read... there is a strange amenity of temper and style which bathes the whole composition even when it is disgusting or tiresome."

In 1980, Anatole Broyard described Tropic of Cancer as "Mr. Miller's first and best novel", showing "a flair for finding symbolism in unobtrusive places" and having "beautiful sentence[s]". Julian Symons wrote in 1993 that "the shock effect [of the novel] has gone", although "it remains an extraordinary document". A 2009 essay on the book by Ewan Morrison described it as a "life-saver" when he was "wandering from drink to drink and bed to bed, dangerously close to total collapse".

Appearances in lists of best books
The book has been included in a number of lists of best books, such as the following:
 * In July 1998, the Board of the Modern Library ranked Tropic of Cancer 50th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
 * In July 1998, students of the Radcliffe Publishing Course, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board, compiled their own list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, and the book was ranked 84th.
 * Between July 1998 and October 1998, an online reader poll by the Modern Library placed the novel 68th among the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
 * In a survey of librarians published in November 1998, the book was ranked 132nd in a list of 150 fiction books from the 20th century.
 * Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
 * The novel was listed in the 2006 book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
 * It was one of the "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read" in The Guardian in 2009.
 * It was included in the list "The 75 Books Every Man Should Read" (2011) in Esquire.

Influences on Miller
Critics and Miller himself have claimed that Miller was influenced by the following in writing the novel:

 * Louis-Ferdinand Céline, especially Journey to the End of the Night (1932), his semi-autobiographical first novel featuring a "comic, antiheroic character". Nevertheless, George Orwell wrote "Both books use unprintable words, both are in some sense autobiographical, but that is all."
 * Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially his Notes from Underground (1864).
 * James Joyce. Nevertheless, Orwell felt that the novel did not resemble Joyce's Ulysses.
 * François Rabelais.
 * Henry David Thoreau.
 * Walt Whitman, who wrote in a similar style about common people.   The poet is mentioned favorably in the novel several times, for example: "In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death. Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said."

Novel's influence on other writers
Tropic of Cancer "has had a huge and indelible impact on both the American literary tradition and American society as a whole". The novel influenced many writers, as exemplified by the following:

 * Lawrence Durrell's 1938 novel The Black Book was described as "celebrat[ing] the Henry Miller of Tropic of Cancer as his [Durrell's] literary father".
 * It has been claimed that the novel impressed the Beat Generation writers in the 1960s such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
 * Erica Jong wrote "...when I was searching for the freedom to write [the 1973 novel] Fear of Flying, I picked up Tropic of Cancer and the sheer exuberance of the prose unlocked something in me." In turn, Miller praised Fear of Flying in 1974, comparing it to Tropic of Cancer.

Adaptation
The novel was adapted for a 1970 film Tropic of Cancer directed by Joseph Strick, and starring Rip Torn, James T. Callahan, and Ellen Burstyn. Miller was a "technical consultant" during the production of the movie; although he had reservations about the adaptation of the book, he praised the final movie. The film was rated X in the United States, which was later changed to an NC-17 rating.

References or allusions in other works

 * Literature

 * In his 1948 autobiography, poet and writer Robert W. Service wrote a few comments about Tropic of Cancer, for example, "Of course the book shocked me but I could not deny a strange flicker of genius in its wildest fights."
 * In chapter 2 of William Gaddis's 1955 novel The Recognitions, set in Paris in the 1930s, an artist complains "I've got to show these pictures, I've got to sell some of them, but how can I have people coming up there with him there? He's dying. I can't put him out on the street, dying like that . . . even in Paris" (63–64), which echoes the scene in Tropic of Cancer where the artist Kruger tries to get the sick Miller out of his studio so that he can exhibit his pictures. "People can't look at pictures and statues with enthusiasm when a man is dying before their eyes" (Grove ed., 195).
 * In his 1960 short story "Entropy", Thomas Pynchon begins with a quote from this novel.
 * In the 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Lila reads the book "as though... [it] were Heidi".
 * In the 1969 novel The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace, the book and the trial are mentioned.
 * In the 1994 play Pterodactyls by Nicky Silver, the novel is mentioned by the character Emma: "She reads poems by Emily Bronté and I read chapters from The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller."
 * In Carl Hiaasen's 1995 Stormy Weather a character quotes a line from the novel.
 * In the 1998 nonfiction book Rocket Boys, Quentin shows Sonny a copy of Tropic of Cancer and asks him "You want to know about girls?"

 * Music

 * Satirical songwriter and mathematics instructor Tom Lehrer stated that he intended to write a million-selling math book which he would call Tropic of Calculus.
 * The 1980s British band The Weather Prophets was named after a line in the opening paragraph of the novel: "Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet."
 * Frontman Henry Rollins of the hardcore punk band Black Flag was heavily affected by the book as well and frequently made references to it in his songs, often taking lyrics directly from Tropic of Cancer. He would also read passages of it to his audiences mid-show.
 * In the song "Delirium of Disorder" by punk band Bad Religion, the opening verse quotes the novel, "Life is a sieve through which my anarchy strains resolving itself into words. Chaos is the score on which reality is written...".
 * In the song "Protest Song 68" by Refused, the opening verse quotes the novel, "To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs..."
 * In the song "Ashes of American Flags" by Wilco, one phrase from the lyrics is taken from the novel: "A hole without a key."
 * In 2012, the American grindcore band Pig Destroyer used a passage from the book on tape, read by Larry King, as the introduction to their song The Bug on their album entitled Book Burner.

 * Film and television

 * In a 1962 episode of the TV series Perry Mason ("The Case of the Bogus Books"), a character tells another that "Tropic of Cancer is not a medical book. Far from it."
 * In the 1963 film, Take Her, She's Mine, adapted from Phoebe and Henry Ephron's play of the same name, Jimmy Stewart, as Mr. Michaelson, reads the (soon to be banned by the mayor) book written by Henry Miller. Sandra Dee, Stewart's daughter in the film, has organized a sit-in style protest against banning the book.
 * In the 1985 film After Hours, the protagonist Paul is reading the book in a coffee shop when a Marcy comments on it from the table across, setting the events of the film in motion.
 * In the 1990 movie Henry & June, the first draft of the book is referenced and discussed by Henry and friends.
 * In the 1991 version of Cape Fear, the characters of Max Cady and Danielle Bowden discuss the book briefly.
 * In the 1991 Seinfeld episode "The Library", Jerry is accused of never returning a copy of the book to the public library after borrowing it many years before, during high school, in 1971. It is revealed that the book was stolen by the gym teacher while a gang of jocks were beating up on George. In the present day, the gym teacher still holds the library book, despite being homeless and insane.
 * In the 2000 romantic comedy film 100 Girls, the characters Dora and Matthew read an excerpt from Tropic of Cancer together: "Your Sylvester! ... After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards."
 * At the beginning of the 2000 movie Final Destination, Clear (Ali Larter) is reading Tropic of Cancer upon arrival at the airport.
 * In the 2010 telenovela ¿Dónde Está Elisa? a copy of the book is found in Elisa's locker at school.
 * In Season 2 of the television series Ozark Jonah reads an explicit excerpt of the book to Buddy.

Typescript
The typescript of the book was auctioned for $165,000 in 1986. Yale University owns the typescript, which was displayed to the public in 2001.

title: Tropic of Cancer (novel)