by D . J . Enright (Author)
A commonplace book by its very nature, must be unique; D. J. Enright's proves to be a mixture of personal, critical, playful, and profound. It is a commerce between the author and many other authors, touching, for instance, on childhood, young murderers, the use and abuse of stereotypes, modern biography, ars erotica , contemporary manners, old age, animals, obsolete notions of integrity in business and government, and the machinery of dreaming. A common reader himself, and as light of heart as the subject will allow, the author explores such prose poets as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Freud. He looks into the world of books, contemporary Grub Street, the eccentricities of criticism, the reductive tendency of current fiction, literary theory and practice, and the necessity and impracticability of censorship. There are also some new poems in a work that is amusing, and thought-provoking, and highly revealing of Enright himself Some extracts.. Voltaire, giving a lesson in tragic diction to a young actress who lacked fire: My dear young lady, act as though the devil were in you! What would you do if a cruel tyrant had just separated you from your lover? She answered: I would take
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 260
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 21 Sep 1995
ISBN 10: 0192824937
ISBN 13: 9780192824936
D.J. Enright's learning is not only prodigious, it is pertinent. This is a book that would help to restore humanism to the universities if it could be handed out to new students at the gate. --Clive James