In The Tropic of Cancer and The Colossus of Maroussi, where Miller is at his best, in spectacular bursts, in similar fits and starts throughout his oeuvre, there is an eager vitality and exuberance to the writing which is exhilarating; a rush of spirit into the world as though all the sparkling wines had been uncorked at once; and the language we watchfully hear skip, whoop and wheel across Miller’s pages makes an important esthetic point, especially to those of us who are more at home with Joyce or Woolf or James or Proust, and that is that beneath all the quiet ruminations of the mind, the slendered sensibilities, the measured lyricism of finer feelings, even nearby the remotest precincts of being, is a psyche like quicksand, an omnivorous animal, the continually chewing self.

William Gass, World Within The Word