![]() To pursue such a life is frightening enough: to do it behind the rancorous veil of the American dream is horrifying. His transformation from the morass of society is painful. Those jobs he does find do little for his prosperity rather he finds himself as a cog on a wheel of Hell. Married and with a young child-a relationship which he finds stifling to his creative development-Miller faces tenable employment situations to support this life. Most artists will immediately recognize the struggle Miller endures. ![]() While Cancer chronicles the latter portion of Miller's experience abroad, the prequel, Capricorn, written five years later in 1939, is the more developed and more seminal of the two and elucidates with much greater detail the effects of his epiphany. ![]() The books are designed to be read together by the serious student of writing to magnify the metamorphosis, the rite of passage. Miller's two tropics-Cancer and Capricorn-are manuals for the creative life: they serve as testimony to Miller's transformation from a lost-in-thought lay-schmuck of the 1930's American economy-working in the belly of the beast in such jobs as his position with the Western Union Telegraph company, which he refers to as the "Cosmococcic / Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company"-to his evolution as an expatriate writer living in Paris. ![]()
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