Cyril Connolly

First published in 1945, The Condemned Playground expresses the author’s personal views on art and literature and the social science. Infinitely entertaining and witty, at times devastatingly destructive and never merely kind, Mr. Connelly has, nevertheless, an underlying note of critical integrity and even moral fervour. This book will be of interest to students of history and literature.

First published in 1945, The Condemned Playground expresses the author’s personal views on art and literature and the social science. Infinitely entertaining and witty, at times devastatingly destructive and never merely kind, Mr. Connelly has, nevertheless, an underlying note of critical integrity and even moral fervour. This book will be of interest to students of history and literature.

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) was one of the most influential book reviewers and critics in England, contributing regularly to The New Statesmen, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. His essays have been collected in book form and published to wide acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. The Unquiet Grave is considered by many to be his most enduring work. It is a highly personal journal written during the devastation of World War II, filled with reflective passages that deal with aging, the break-up of a long term relationship, and the horrors of the war around him. It is also a wonderfully varied intellectual feast: a collection of aphorisms, epigrams, and quotations from such masters of European literature as Horace, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Goethe. Dazzlingly original in both form and content, The Unquiet Grave has continued to influence generations of writers.

Etes-vous enclin a la reverie? Buvez-vous du vin en dinant? Fumez-vous? Faites-vous de la politique? Avez-vous une vie sexuelle et /ou une vie de famille? Aimez-vous la conversation, la vie mondaine, le succes? Etes-vous pauvres? Devez-vous travailler pour gagner votre vie ou, au contraire, administrer votre fortune? Vous abaissez-vous a ecrire pour les journaux? Si vous repondez oui a l'une ou l'autre de ces questions, alors abandonnez tout espoir de devenir un jour un ecrivain, ou si une succession de coincidences heureuses (succes commercial de vos precedentes oeuvres du a l'actualite des sujets traites, critiques elogieuses d'amis, etc.) a pu vous donner a croire que vous en etiez un, de le rester. Implacable, irreductible, intraitable, infernal, Cyril Connolly, le plus grand critique anglais des annees 1930 aux annees 1970, part ici en guerre contre les parasites du genie , les fleaux dont aucun ecrivain n'est a l'abri . Publie en 1938, revise en 1949, Ce qu'il faut faire pour ne plus etre ecrivain fait partie des quelques tres rares grandes lecons sur l'ecriture. La premiere partie, le probleme essentiel , tente une classification des genres et des styles la deuxieme, l'ombre du seneve , la plus feroce et la plus drole, analyse justement les ennemis de l'ecrivain la troisieme, enfin, Une enfance au temps de George V , autobiographique, est une analyse minutieuse du systeme educatif des public schools dont tant de grands ecrivains anglais sont issus.

"Whom the gods wish to destroy," writes Cyril Connolly, "they first call promising." First published in 1938 and long out of print, Enemies of Promise, an "inquiry into the problem of how to write a book that lasts ten years," tests the boundaries of criticism, journalism, and autobiography with the blistering prose that became Connolly's trademark. Connolly here confronts the evils of domesticity, politics, drink, and advertising as well as novelists such as Joyce, Proust, Hemingway, and Faulkner in essays that remain fresh and penetrating to this day. "A fine critic, compulsive traveler, and candid autobiographer. . . . Connolly] lays down the law for all writers who wanted to count. . . . He had imagination and decisive images flashed with the speed of wit in his mind."-V. S. Pritchett, New York Review of Books "Anyone who writes, or wants to write, will find something on just about every single page that either endorses a long-held prejudice or outrages, and that makes it a pretty compelling read. . . . You end up muttering back at just about every ornately constructed pens e that Connolly utters, but that's one of the joys of this book."-Nick Hornby, The Believer "A remarkable book."-Anthony Powell

Critical and autobiographical essays by a noted British reviewer and literary journalist. " Connolly] has the wonderful capacity for enthusiasm, for exciting in us his own unflagging joy in the presence of genius"(New Yorker). Index.