Tropic of Cancer

“I am going to sing to you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse.”

As Henry introduces his story, he references Walt Whitman by describing the act of literary creation as “singing.” He also foreshadows the development of his philosophical vision by claiming he will “sing” (write) to a dead person, blurring the boundaries between life and death.

“Moldorf, multiform and unerring, goes through his roles—clown, juggler, contortionist, priest, lecher, mountebank. The amphitheater is too small. He puts dynamite in it. The audience is drugged. He scotches it.”

This description of Moldorf draws attention to the novel’s interest in social performance, both literal and metaphorical. It also lays the groundwork for Henry’s later claims that “true” art requires a total dissolution of the existing order, even if that dissolution involves figurative explosions.

“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off.”

While describing the pseudo-religious book that he hopes to write, Henry touches on some major parts of his cosmological vision, including the notion that the world is doomed and that things will inevitably improve after it has been destroyed. This is also an example of how he is intentionally positioning himself to become the scribe who records the death of the old world and the birth of a new one.