This story, Poe's only novel, is an endurance test for both reader and characters. I believe it was originally serialized, and reads like a collection of incidents rather than a complete story. However, it is a captivating tale, astounding in it's detail and casual horror. Arthur Gordon Pym was born under an unlucky star. He survives in the most inconceivable circumstances, from a drifting, overturned hulk to the frozen waters of the Antarctic. Each page turned piles more horror in his path, described with a growing clinical distance. Pym himself becomes more desensitized to each incident, until he views the irrational with a casual curiosity. The language is beautifully detailed, and some feel this story is the inspiration for "Moby Dick."

Altogether, a delightfully disturbing story. One of the best I have read.

A Great Poe Story

"The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket" is a devilish tale about a young sea-loving man by the name of Arthur Gordon Pym. He becomes a stowaway onboard a ship by the name of Grampus. This gravely error causes the mutiny of the Grampus, the stranding of the Grampus at sea, and the death of his friend, Augustus. I believe this story is a wonderful spine-tingling tale by the popular author Edgar Allan Poe. This story would be a wonderful addition to anyone's horror story collection, especially anyone who loves Edgar A. Poe's gruesomely good stories of horror and mystery.

I haven't yet ruled out the possibility that I'm simply an oddball, but I assume every boy goes through a sort of Poe mania at some stage, at least I did. In fact, I got so bad around 5th grade that, having torn through the stories and poems, I was even reading biographies about him. But somehow, even with all of that, I think I had missed this longer work. I'm sorry I did, because while this wildly overstuffed adventure is enjoyable now, I would have really loved it as a kid.

When Arthur Gordon Pym stows away on a whaling ship, he little dreams that he'll encounter tyranny, mutiny, biblical storms, cannibalism, shipwreck...and Poe's just getting warmed up.

I've read that he cobbled together this semi-novel from several shorter pieces he'd written. It has a somewhat uneven feel to it; episodic, even disjointed. And as the episodes are piled one on top of the other it becomes a tad much. But it is always fun, often thrilling, and the mayhem that lurks on the surface guards layer upon layer of allegory and allusion. As you read you find yourself saying, "Hey, Melville borrowed that scene and Jack London got that idea here and Lovecraft cadged this plot..." If you have any doubts about how influential a literary figure Edgar Allan Poe was, this melodramatic masterpiece will put them to rest. More importantly, you'll thoroughly enjoy yourself.

GRADE: A-

This book is just mesmerizing - it is so beautiful. Mark Rothko took art to a spiritual level that has seldom been achieved. The beauty of his colors and the simplicity of his work mesh to dominate the field of art, and make him a true master of our times. This particular book is full of color pictures of his work. Highly recommended for any art lover.

American artist Mark Rothko's artworks represents the very foundations of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and his key works are here presented in full-page color, introduced by essays from his contemporaries. This superbly produced volume with its exquisite presentation considers all of Rothko's works and contributions and is an essential acquisition for any serious collection on the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Yes, the reviewer who commented on the quality of the prints needs to get their specs looked at. This book is wonderfully produced, from the quality of the printing to the quality of the paper. It will sit alongside Anfan's wonderful catalogue raisonee on my shelves. I only wish I had followed my urge to hop on the Eurostar train from London to Paris on a day trip to see the exhibition. The last full Rothko exhibition I saw was in London in 1987, a mind expanding experience. This book is a world better than the catalogue of that exhibition and is definitely a must for any Rothko admirer. I will be in the Rothko room of the new Tate Modern gallery almost every day.

Nearly everyone who is likely to view this page knows and loves the movie, and would most likely prefer watching it to reading it. This leaves devoted fans of Wilder and Chandler to consider it, as well as perhaps students of the form.

The screenplay itself is an unquestioned masterpiece, and has not even the movie's very very few faults (poor acting by secondary characters, etc.). So I will limit my comments to my assertion that this edition GREATLY underestimates the contributions of Chandler, going so far as to paint him as a pasty fussbudget ignorant of the craft of writing. Not true, bud, not by a long shot.

Wilder and Chandler got along like cats and dogs. That's no secret. Yet while Chandler had his faults, Wilder seemed to live to antagonize him, and quite uncharitably described him in some comments reprinted here. Saying how the married Chandler envied Wilder for "having all the pretty girls at Paramount" is one example of how cheap and childish the director's opinion of his co-writer was, as stated in this edition, quoting Wilder's bio. Either Wilder or Meyers had some crude bias against Chandler, if the introduction of this tome is to be believed at all. Because it's not even an accurate presentation of what Wilder really felt, as quoted in Chandler's own hit-and-miss bio written by Tom Hiney.

Anyway, much of the *structure* of the screenplay- the flashbacks, the additional scenes, the ebb and flow- is Wilder's tremendous savvy. But the things film historians seem to treasure above all else in this movie are the rapid-fire, crudely poetic, vernacular dialogue, as well as the feeling of cynical decay wrapped around the doomed couple's whole misbegotten endeavor like a shroud. And for those, I propose, Chandler must be given the majority of the credit. His novels are too sad and complex and perfect, providing ample evidence that he could not have been the doofus this book portrays.

There's my speech. Take it for what it's worth. The book is a good buy for serious students. But Chandler fans will be ticked off.

For those who already purchased the Library of America edition of "Raymond Chandler : Later Novels and Other Writings" (which contains the screenplay of "Double Indemnity"), here are two reasons why you should buy THIS edition of the "Double Indemnity" screenplay:

1. Unlike most other screenplays published in book form, this edition of "Double Indemnity" appears to be a facsimile of the original screenplay; It's not just a book, but a relic of classic film.

2. This edition also has the alternate/deleted "Gas Chamber" ending which the Library of America edition is lacking.

If it were not for the above two qualities, I would recommend any Chandler fan to purchase the Library of America edition of Chandler's work that contains the "Double Indemnity" screenplay instead of this one. Here's why:

In this edition, Chandler's name does NOT appear on the cover; only Bill Wilder is credited on the cover. However, Chandler's name DOES appear on the title page and first page of the screenplay (the Amazon scans of the book illustrate this curiosity). Why the exclusion of Chandler from the cover?!
Answer: This book was published while Billy Wilder was still alive and he was able to steal the limelight from Raymond Chandler one last time. Well done, Mr. Wilder.

As for the screenplay itself, I've read a lot of screenplays of movies that I have liked and "Double Indemnity" reads better than most. The voice-over dialogue for Neff (written by Chandler) is the best part of the screenplay and is worth having in print. Whether you're a fan of classic Film Noir or an aspiring screenwriter, this is a must-have for your bookshelf. As for Chandler fans, it's only a matter of which edition.

For more information on Raymond Chandler's involvement in "Double Indemnity", I recommend the book "Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir". After reading, you will see why I and other readers are so incensed by the exclusion of Chandler's credit from the cover.

Double Indemnity is one of Billy Wilders best films. The screenplay is taut and extremely well written. You cannot miss this opportunity to read the master at the top of his game. Among the many highlights is the supermarket scene between the two conspirators. An absolute must read

Errol Flynn reveals all in this very well written autobiography. He is truly one of the most misunderstood people of the twentieth century. Besides that, he focuses on his love of writing, and I'm willing to compare his work to the likes of Twain, Hemmingway, who have you. If you like action, romance, drama, and comedy--Flynn is your man, and no one can tell the story better than himself. Read This!

l first read this book at 12.l have read it once a year ever since.It just has that way of making you feel alive.Adventure,action,fun and zest.This book is greatly under rated simply because it was written by the legendary hell-raiser himself.Do yourself a favour,buy this book,read it and feel the excitement rush from the pages.

Errol Flynn was a man ahead of his time...seen as a "womanizer" he gave a gift to women of beauty and physical grace beyond compare.. ..the word "womanizer" doesn't apply to him.. I say,more like woman pleaser.This book is for anyone who wants to get away from the usuall day to day hastle of living..and dream about what they could do if they would dare to.... ....it could be the ultimate 'self-help' book for anyone wanting to go beyond the status quo.

Conrad is a real star, I'm rather fond of him. Under Western Eyes is about living in a time of revolutionary urgency, individual fragility in a delicate system, and personal honor.

To summarize; Razumov, the 'Hero' is a university student in Russia post 1905 but pre 1917 who keeps to himself and has no real family and no close friends. A fellow student and a revolutionary, Victor Haldin, assasinates a local oppressive Tsarist autocrat. He then takes a chance and takes momentary asylum with Razumov, asking him to help him get out of the city. Razumov is an evolutionary progressive, not a revolutionary. Not willing to risk association with a radical like Haldin and destroy his entire life, Razumov turns him in to the police, and Haldin is subsequently hung.

The rest of the novel deals with Razumov's struggle with himself- he betrayed, and he has to live with a lie. Complicating things, he falls in love with Haldin's sister in exile. Raz can't bear it though, and eventually he does the right thing, but things get messy.

Thats the general plot, but the real meat of the novel is in the characters and the ideas underlying the conversations between them. The idea of how you justify revolution, the chaos of revolution vs the order of gradual reform, the unwillingness and helplessness of the individual caught in it all. And there's a continual theme of the diference between East and West.

Razumov reminds me a bit of Crime and Punishment's Raskolnikov- an isolated university student waxing the time away in a single apartment, brooding over Big Ideas and being slowly crushed by a powerful conscience. The stuff of modernity. Dostoyevsky was a little bit better, so thats why Under Western Eyes only gets 4 stars.

If you are familiar enough with Conrad's writing you will know he has a few favorite words - like "inscrutable" and "destiny". They reflect I believe Conrad's literary outlook. He likes to take characters, give them a haunted past with some shameful secret, emphasize a fatal weakness, introduce some culminating stimulae, and watch the tragic unfold. I think he could have written a brilliant biography of Richard Nixon. But to the point..."Under Western Eyes" is a quintessentially Conradian book. But unlike many of his other novels - Lord Jim, Nostromo, Victory - "Under Western Eyes" treats of period politics (namely the revolutionary movement on the rise in Europe) as he weaves his tale of betrayal and tragedy. There are no heroes in this book (save perhaps one) but only a motley collection of victims, fools, and eccentrics. There is not much action, despite its subject matter. I don't want to give away too much. The story unfolds in Moscow and Geneva, not around political machinations but around the tragedy of the central character, a young Russian thrown into the revolutionary movement entirely against his will. The saga of the young man's anger, self-loathing, and attempts to extricate himself from his "situation" form one salient plot of the novel. The ultimate solution to his unsought conundrum also serves to redeem him in his own eyes, if not those of others.

"Under Western Eyes" is also an attempt by Conrad to explore the peculiarities of the "Russian character". This is another line of development in the work. I put this in partentheses because such notions of racial character are naturally not so well received now as in Conrad's day. Whether you agree or not, Conrad (who himself was Polish) offers some interesting personal insights into the nature of the "inscrutable" Russian soul - its ability to persevere, its mysticism, its ultimate radicalism. Such issues were particular relevent to the time the book was written (1908), as Russia was then already breaking out in revolutionary violence. The story's narrator - a retired English bachelor - are the "Western eyes" under which Russia is regarded.

I might label "Under Western Eyes" a comic-tragedy, in that the primary factor behind the story's tragic chain of events is a misunderstanding. It is ultimately for the book's central character a journey of personal redemtion. Within the context of this, however, Conrad details some of his views on Russia, its people, and the nature of the revolutionary movement. I did not find it as engaging as some of Conrad's other works but anyone interested in the Russian revolutionary movement, or radical politics of the period in general, or with a bent for stories of betrayal, tragedy, and love should take a look.

"Perhaps life is just that," reflected Razumov, pacing to and fro under the trees of the little island, all alone with the bronze statue of Rousseau. "A dream and a fear." It is on this small space of remote land that young Razumov finds what we all seek after--a place for quiet contemplation (reminds me of Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place"). And in this very thought-provoking Rousseau-inspired environment Razumov stumbles upon the thesis that all of life is but a dream--a dream full of constant fear. The taciturn, exiled, young Razumov reminds us of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, and even more so Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Indeed, Conrad attempted to continue the legacy of the great Russian novelists, by forcing an eclectic grasp on some of Dostoevsky's themes (like the need for, and final apparent conclusion of, man's suffering) whilst straying away from other Dostoevskyian qualities. All in all, Under Western Eyes is about ideas--as Conrad repeatedly suggests-an ideal gripping psychological tale of a young intellectual's suffering for choosing the path of the czarist leaders. If Razumov, like Stephen Dedalus, was more skeptical, more prone to the need for exile (not the exile he indeed does embark on to Geneva via the Councilor's strategic plan) would he have ultimately had his eardrums smashed by a revolutionary brute? Certainly, Razumov must confess for his betrayal of Haldin; Razumov realizes the intelligence, love, and raison d' étre of Haldin altogether too late. Razumov, who knowingly understands that because of his actions Haldin lost his life, gives up his own body for lifelong suffering. And by doing so, Razumov seems to willingly accept his punishment, and further he lives no longer in fear. Upon completion of this wonderful novel, we can bask in the warm sunny glow of Conrad's wit that shines upon us--"Peter Ivanovitch (or any person who opposes despotic cruelty) is an inspired man." Joseph Conrad is an inspired man.

For those wanting an orientation to the breadth of Christian thinking on the proper relationship between Church and State, particularly as it concerns war, there is no more current collection than this one. Particularly in times when many churchgoers in the West may be wondering whether it is right to be waging war against a largely unknown enemy, this collection is startingly broad and eminently readable. Rempel, furthermore, is no mere academic, but an accomplished peace practitioner working at the United Nations.

Peace is said to be a central theme in Christian scripture, but through the ages, different churches have persued this each in their own ways. There is an ecumenical effort under way now to bring unity to Christainity and peacemaking is one of the areas of hope. This book is the result of a consultation put on by the National Council of Churches to find ways to bring unity to Christainity. There are 11 essays by 10 different demoninations printed here. They are fascinating. As much as I enjoyed reading the essay by the Quaker (being one myself) I also really enjoyed reading the essays from the Lutheran, Mennonite,Orthodox, Brethren, Catholic, Refromed, Asseblies of God, Baptist, and Church of Christ perspectives. The essays speak of both the history of each church in terms of peacemaking, as well as thier current views. There was a lot I didn't know about the changes in attitude in regard to the just war tradition, for example. I wasn't aware of how other churches have grown and changed in the last forty years or so. I enjoyed this book very much and found it pretty accessible (for a non-academic).

I have to agree with Mr. Hurst's eloquent review, and I'll put it more succinctly: this is a lousy book. Why write a biography of Errol Flynn, of all people, if you're going to do it with no humor and with lordly disdain? It's like a biography of Tom Sawyer written by his half-brother, the tattle-tale goody-goody Sid. Like many, I guess, I picked it up in order to read about Sean Flynn, since there is so little out there about him. But as noted, Sean is reduced to three chapters presented as endpapers. One might conclude there wasn't enough to his short life to make a full book... if there weren't so much other evidence of the biographer's tendency to stop researching once he has enough evidence to support his (rather ugly) pre-determined thesis.

Jeffrey Meyers, best known for his works on such literary figures as D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a gifted, at times brilliant biographer. Here he brings to his treatment of Errol and Sean Flynn his knowledge of the world's great literature. Meyers can take almost any figure and make him acceptable from a literary point of view. Who else could find a parallel between Errol Flynn and Edgar Allan Poe? One can imagine a future Meyers biography of Bugsy Siegel, with frequent allusions to Julius Caesar, Faust, and MacBeth.

Meyers's gift for finding parallels between disparate people's lives is especially impressive. I found those between the lives of John Barrymore and Flynn to be especially compelling and insightful - more so than those between Errol and Sean. With reference to Sean, few will feel competent to judge the validity of Meyers' sections which reincarnate his last days. Some of it I found persuasive, but other parts - especially some of the links in the chain of logic - seemed weak; the recreation of "the facts" may be a bit too confident when dealing with mainly hearsay evidence.

In the main section of this book Errol Flynn comes across as a tragic, forlorn, dejected, melancholic sociopath. The habitual choice to put Flynn in a darker rather than positive light surfaces in numerous ways, as in Meyers' handling of Basil Rathbone. All biography involves some shading of details, which usually goes under the heading of "literary license." But the deliberate reshaping of a quotation by rearrangement and omission, for the purpose of producing the desired result, is disingenuous - a distinct "no-no" for a front-rank biographer. At the top of p. 146, a long comment of Basil Rathbone is subtly rearranged so as to produce the desired result ' to contribute to Meyers' overall scheme of the father-son shared death-wish. It creates a false impression of what Rathbone actually wrote about Flynn, and leaves one wondering how many other things have been cleverly reshaped in order to fit the thesis.

The question therefore lingers: Does Meyers actually get under Errol's skin (or that of Sean for that matter)? The answer, I fear, must be no - despite what Meyers and his publicists say. Meyers, in my opinion, is far too detached in his literary mien to explore effectively a man like Flynn. His Flynn is a two-dimensional, black-and-white figure who set out to destroy himself. The real-life Flynn was an infuriatingly complex, three-dimensional, Technicolor personality. Meyers is a very careful writer, but he also tends to be a cold, dispassionate, joyless writer, with an occasional tendency toward shading and over simplification. One gets little sense of the joi-de-vivre of the Errol Flynn of this book. Flynn was at heart a very, very funny man.

On the other hand there is something un-humorous, at points even tiresome, about INHERITED RISK. The whole thing is written from the point of view of Greek tragedy. It is doubtful that after reading it the reader will have chuckled even once. This is a major failing in a biography of Errol Flynn. The ever-so-literate Meyers, in all his zeal to analyze him - to dissect him into his component parts and to isolate his various destructive influences - has somehow let the real Flynn elude him.

There are other anomalies in INHERITED RISK. In one of his appendices (p. 326), Meyers breaks down Flynn's films into three categories: "best," "seeable," and "poor." With all due respect to Meyers, the list is bizarre, and may call into question his cinematic judgment. Is "The Roots of Heaven" (1958) really a better film than "They Died with Their Boots On" (1941) or "Adventures of Don Juan" (1949)? What cinematic myopia would place "The Sisters" (1938), "Edge of Darkness" (1943), and "Northern Pursuit" (1943) - not to mention "Silver River" (1948) - into the "poor" category?

Despite the dual photos on the front of the dust-jacket, the book is not really an analysis of the relationship of the two men, Errol and Sean, along the lines of Sir Edmund Goss' FATHER AND SON. The disparity in the treatments is made clear by the arrangement - Sean constitutes the endpapers (totaling a mere 49 pages), while the main section deals with Errol (244 pages). There is thus a serious question of balance.

Also, Meyers' central idea of Greek tragedy - that of the fatal character flaw of the father being reproduced in the son, leading to the latter's inevitable doom, does not really come off - no matter how energetically Meyers tries. One gets from this book the clear impression that the lives of the two Flynns were a complete waste. That may well have been true of the son, but it can't be said of the father. Errol Flynn brought untold joy to millions worldwide ' and still does to this day.

INHERITED RISK is a missed opportunity. With all the research that went into the book, it could have been the best Flynn biography ever written. But throughout most of it Meyers' staid approach just doesn't hold the reader's attention. There is also a procrustean feel ' the impression that the lives of these two men are being stretched and cut to fit the "Greek tragedy" model that Meyers is pushing. Such shortcomings, sadly, mar what otherwise might have been a monumental biographical achievement.

There is a tendency to describe people whose lives veer into chaos far more frequently than our own as troubled. The balance is provided in this book by rendering an account of how superior the lives of ERROL AND SEAN FLYNN IN HOLLYWOOD AND VIETNAM seem compared to the rest of us. I'm partial to this account because I was already a fan of the Flynn associates in Nam: Tim Page, Michael Herr, John Steinbeck IV, Robert Sam Anson, and Dana Stone. Dana Stone gets credit for taking the photo in Ha Than in 1968 in which Sean Flynn, "In full battle dress and holding a grenade, with arms outstretched and right boot in midair, he charges over the top of the hill and attacks the North Vietnamese enemy. . . . After the officer was wounded, Sean saved the day by assuming one of Errol's movie roles, leading the charge himself and killing an enemy soldier." (pp. 55-56). There are few pictures of Sean in this book, but real fans will have the collection in REQUIEM: BY THE PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO DIED IN VIETNAM AND INDOCHINA, edited by Horst Faas and Tim Page.

The picture of Sean Flynn and Dana Stone on motorcycles in Vietnam, c. 1970, facing page 97, might be rough for those whose expectations were shaped by Jack Warner's "considerable shrewdness and a clear grasp of public taste." (caption to picture 11). Errol Flynn was interesting enough to dominate the first 29 pictures in this book. Then number 30 shows Sean Flynn with a friend, Steve Cutter, in 1958, and the final page of pictures shows the contrast between the highly professional look of an American studio portrait, c. 1962, and how Sean and Dana would look when last seen by Western eyes.

If armies are usually considered highly disciplined, as well as the most modern, civilized mechanism for establishing order in the midst of chaos, Sean and Dana miscalculated how outrageously the enemy in Cambodia would be striving for something else, that they hadn't counted upon. A journalist card issued by the U.S. Department of Defense was supposed to be sufficient to convince the inhabitants of this planet that they possessed the opportunity to have their story told to the world, and the cameras should have convinced the enemy that the main thing the Americans wanted to take was pictures. Part of Sean's trouble was that he was expecting to see more than the usual amount of trouble. The previous year, Sean spent a few days in jail in Djakarta because of a 17-year-old high school girl, daughter of a Caltex corporation lawyer and a princess from Sumatra, "named after a Hindu goddess." (p. 49). For me (still an effetely snobbish reader and broadcaster of my own opinions), being in the army was like spending two years with the Djakarta taxi driver who drove Sean and the girl to her home in his Mercedes taxi. The taxi driver assumed that the girl was the hot attraction that Sean thought she was and returned with a Chinese businessman. The story is related partly in words that Sean wrote to his mother November 2 and December 4, 1969, which admitted that Sean "stepped out of the bushes swinging a baseball bat. He smashed the car's and windshield, then attacked the driver. The Chinese customer meanwhile had fled." (p. 49).

Tying it all together like this book does is a hoot: "American officers expected extraordinary courage from Errol's son and Sean always met their expectations. Accompanying the 4th Division's long-range recon patrollers for a month, Sean walked point on dangerous four-man patrols in the northern Highlands. He stayed in a besieged bunker at Kon Tien where, in only three days, 375 Marines were wounded." (p. 51). As famous as Sean Flynn became, it might still be possible to find 375 Marines who remember being wounded in the same bunker at Kon Tien, but it seems more likely they were wounded at Con Thien when Sean was in some other country. Sean probably had more combat experience than most of the guys on walking recon patrols for the 4th Division, who previously were more likely to have some incident of looking for a lost pet in their childhood than of finding anything in the Highlands. Most of the 4th Division called it the Central Highlands. Up north, where the Marine operated, Con Thien was at one end of the McNamara Line on the map on page 127 of HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE VIETNAM WAR by Harry G. Summers, Jr. According to an official count in that book, 3,077 mortar, artillery, and rocket rounds struck the base there during the week of September 19-27, 1967, only three months after Sean Flynn photographed the results of the six-day Arab-Israeli War, when, "On his way back from Sinai, Sean dragged a recoilless rifle behind his rented Volkswagen and gave it to Mandy Rice-Davies (who had been implicated in the John Profumo spy-and-sex scandal in Britain and had emigrated to Israel) to decorate her discotheque in Tel Aviv." (Meyers, p. 45).

Most of ERROL AND SEAN FLYNN IN HOLLYWOOD AND VIETNAM is devoted to the life of Errol Flynn, pages 59-303. His death of a heart attack was rather pathetic, as the doctors in those days seemed better able to find heart problems in an autopsy setting than "when Flynn suddenly felt sharp pains in his back and legs." (p. 295). A doctor told him to ease the pain by lying on the floor. "After an autopsy, the coroner found that his death was caused by myocardial infarction (blood not reaching the heart), coronary thrombosis (clot in the coronary blood vessels) and coronary atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)." (p. 295). Errol's mother, Marelle, wrote to Sean two months later that "my poor boy knew that he had not long to live. He had several heart attacks, & had been warned seriously only a short time ago." (p. 295).

Jeffrey Meyers is the author of this clearly written biography of George Orwell (Eric Blair). The biography covers the whole of Orwell's life, including his socialist but anti-Stalinist left wing beliefs, time fighting for the Anarchist/Trotskyite POUM in the Spanish Civil War, lifelong battle over his health and his infatuation with various women as he grew older.

In our time Orwell has been claimed by the right wing (something that would have appalled him) yet Meyers shows his definite, though rocky, affiliation with Englands leftist movements which he kept to the end of his life. Another pervasive element is Orwell's constant money problem's finally resolved, ironiclly, when he was literally on his deathbed.

For clarity of writing this biography can't be criticized. It reads quickly because the style is so straightforward. Meyers, who's written several biographies, is certainly a master at his craft. I'd recommend this as a good read and overview of Orwell's literary and personal life. Good biography.

Jeffrey Meyers is a biographer of some renown. An accomplished writer of criticism, his works focus mainly on literature, covering subjects from 'Homosexuality and Art' to studies on the mechanics of biography itself. He has published portraits of many literary figures - Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway, displaying an uncanny genius for research. ~Orwell - Wintry Conscience of a Generation~ is one of his more recent contributions that has given us a new and more down to earth portrayal of one of the most admired literary cult-figures in English letters. This book is not a hagiography, a monument-chiselling-excercise, creating more myth than fact: in this biography we are introduced to a human being, at times dark and disturbing, who received the calling to write somewhat late in life, and who showed a staunch integrity that today is quite rare.

Personally, reading Orwell is similar to sitting in the principal's office, being told in no uncertain terms the hard facts about the world, to then come away with a much firmer hold on reality. Orwell is a wake-up call, shattering any illusions you might have of a so-called just and fair society, revealing the numerous machinations of power under superficial propaganda that those in a position of influence want us to believe. While others were band wagoning, blowing any way the political and philosophical breeze was heading at the time, Orwell held fast to what he knew to be the truth - and eventually paid the price.

I found it interesting that Eric Blair (Orwell) suddenly dropped his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, (a truly detestable job for any man of conscience) to become a full time writer without having really written anything of significance. From the point of this 'calling', until his early death from tuberculosis at 47 years of age, wrote some of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, not to mention a myriad of essays, articles and reviews, which scholars, historians, and political scientists are pouring over to this day. Another interesting point - Orwell believed that if a writer produced anything less than 100,000 words a year, they were not doing their job. Anyone who writes professionally or other wise, knows this to be a daunting task.

At the beginning of Orwell's writing career, his actions showed considerable courage, a self-imposed guilt, believing that a rough, tramp-like existence was absolutely necessary: "...Every suspicion of self advancement, even to "succeed" in life to the extent of making a few hundreds a year, seemed to me spiritually ugly, a species of bullying...My mind turned immediately towards extreme cases, the social outcast: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes...what I wanted, at the time, was to find some way of getting out of the respectable world altogether." As Meyers simply explains, "Living rough and becoming a writer were part of the same route out of the respectable world." (p.79)

One of my favourite novels, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', describes this conscious escape from the privileged Victorian middle class into the dark recesses of working class poverty. Orwell is of that particular writing school where, in order to write about it, you have to live it - and he did so, plunging himself continually into personal and political conflict.

Jeffrey Meyers has done us all a big favour, giving us a gritty astonishing portrait of a man of letters, who fought for social justice, informing us through his actions and writing the importance of personal and political integrity - Orwell is a true prophetic moralist.

Jeffrey Meyers' new biography of George Orwell, the brilliant British Socialist writer, is worth reading if short. Meyers does a more than adequate job of chronicling Orwell's varied and sometimes sad life, his personal relationships, and his books and major essays. An odd feature of the book is Meyers' meticulous description of photographs he doesn't include; several of the Orwell photographs he describes have never, to my knowledge, been reproduced elsewhere and might have been interesting in place of the often-reprinted shots featured in the book. It makes me wonder, in fact, if Meyers wanted to print more photographs and the publisher refused. All in all this is a decent, eminently readable biography and should prove a good introduction to Orwell's life. Orwell was, in my view, the finest essayist in the English language in the last century and probably within the last two centuries, and remains the conscience of his time and even of ours. In an age that prides itself on "I've got mine, to hell with you" (to paraphrase Sir Richard Rees, Orwell's friend, writing about Orwell), Orwell remains a staunch defender of a currently unpopular Socialist ideal that calls on all of us to care for one another and strive together to achieve for society what we selfishly and greedily grasp for ourselves now. Readers interested in knowing more about Orwell should also read Michael Shelden's "Orwell," which is more detailed and comprehensive (although it should be noted that Meyers includes some new information of his own) and Bernard Crick's "George Orwell: A Life" which some have discredited but which remains a incisive look at Orwell's works and his politics.

This is the life of the handsome, flamboyant and personable writer who flew too close to the flame of fame and, like the moth, was consummed by it. Meyer's book is full of revealing anecdotes and stands above others as a somewhat indiscreet compilation of stories about Hemingway.

Sunnye Tiedemann (aka Ruth F. Tiedemann)

Philosophers should enjoy this one. The story is about coming to grips about who you are, expectations and perceptions. This book can be insightful for some, but for me, a little dry. Forster did not foster a logical basis for Rickie to fall in love - or a hopeless romantic one for that matter. From there, the story lost steam.

I find Forster an engaging and compelling writer. His novels often become absorbing despite flat passages and parts that, for me at least, are bordering on the unacceptable - the actions and thoughts of characters sometimes seem contrary to behaviour that seems at all natural to me.

I missed the sense of the exotic in this novel that I got from 'A Passage to India' and 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' - and yet the world of the priveleged in the UK and the cloisters of Cambridge University are exotic for me. It's just that they are so gloomy in this novel - gloomy and troubled. Even the countryside is blighted by the freight trains that repeatedly claim lives as they tramp the landscape.

This novel also has melodramatic elements that stretched my sense of credibility, however revelations of surprises are wonderfully managed. While my thoughts were heading in the right direction with the major revelation, when it did come it brought a true 'aha!' feeling - it made so much sense and yet I, like the characters in the story, had not seen it coming.

But, perhaps for me, the most disappointing aspect of this novel is its attitude towards the 'disadvantaged'. As in the movie 'Edward Scissorhand' the 'distorted' person, while capable of receiving small 'gifts of love' (as Morike put it - see Hugo Wolf's song 'Verborgenheit') it seems from these views of life that the realistic approach to the 'distorted' is that they are incapable of true happiness or fulfilment. This is a view I certainly don't subscribe to.

The Longest Journey's suspicious form and strange conclusions were quite accurately detected by Lionel Trilling who declared this novel in comparison to Forster's others to be his least perfect, least compact, least precisely formed and, simultaneously, his most brilliant, most dramatic, and most passionate. Such a multi-faceted existence is an exact indication of the risky and unfamiliar lines upon which modernists walked. One can assume that Trilling considered A Passage to India to be the wiser and more perfect of Forster's novels in comparison. Where A Passage to India is socio-political, The Longest Journey is personal. The philosophical issues portrayed can be interpreted as being in dialogue with Forster's fellow scholars, pontificating upon the arguments of his academic circles. Scholars who engaged with these same philosophical arguments will no doubt warm to the affable and ironical gestures Forster uses to argue his case.

The structure in which Forster composes The Longest Journey sometimes borders on an obsessive control of the novel's plot and particularly the characters. As the events of the story unfold, we see the frame leading us to a central statement about the human condition. The overemphasis of these points crowded with immense symbolism leads us to question the effectiveness of Forster's statements. Particular points in the story, such as Rickie's realisation that Stephen is his half brother and the reintroduction of Ansell teamed with Stephen, leave us in a troublesome position asking whether this highly personal story was sacrificed to the musically fluent style Forster was working. The Longest Journey's most difficult problem is that it introduces itself as a modernist novel whose commitment is to style, yet its story is obviously Forster's personal account of a series of emotions and events in his own life.

The narrator's voice and Rickie's are essentially interchangeable. The only difference between the two is that the narrator is consciously aware of what Rickie's subconscious knows, but can't admit. If Rickie were so closely intertwined with the authorial voice, then it would seem that there is no room for intimacy with the reader. Yet, the story redeems itself through Rickie's struggle because it is so personal in its metaphysical complications. It is only later in the story, as it drifts farther away from Rickie's consciousness that the emotional impact lets go and we are left wandering through labyrinths of overt symbolic designs. The design in which Rickie is brought to his end is ultimately unfulfilling because the tragedy of the human condition makes itself so poignantly clear when the story is brought full circle to the ending ominously predicted from the outset. Instead, we are asked to accept that no life is tragic because of the enduring factor a human's spiritual hope. If Stephen were created as a character more complicated than a pastoral hero, then this resolution might be effective. However, in the troublesome structure it exists in, it falls short of an enlightening resolution.

Within the complex faults that unfold from an authorial voice inseparable from a central character's consciousness, there is a meaning that resounds through. Apart from stylistic concerns, the modernists were intensely concerned about the human's existential crisis that results from an awareness of the bleak resistance to have faith in either scientific or theological assertions. Rickie is the only vehicle with which we can understand and interpret the complicity of an early twentieth century man's reality. The other characters exist as mere paper figures that serve stilted plot functions. It is through Rickie alone that we understand this particular metaphysical crisis. These sentiments are what make The Longest Journey an important work of modernist fiction in the historical sense. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact of its mismatched structural and sentimental tale's existence.

There is an odd coincidence between symbols he and other modernist writers use. For example, Rickie hangs a towel over a painted harp in the room he is sleeping in at Ansell's house just as Woolf wrote about Mrs. Ramsay hanging her shawl over the skull hanging in the children's bedroom. The symbolic meaning of this can be interpreted in various ways. Yet, in Woolf's writing the meaning makes itself abundantly more clear because the style with which she works supersedes the story in To the Lighthouse. This is why To the Lighthouse is a more successful modernist experiment. A writer that does not work within the laws of the form in which they are working will inevitably fail in their efforts. Forster does not seem to be ignorant of these laws, but he is so enthusiastic about the application of them that his obsessive use of the stylistics becomes rather inappropriate.

Forster often declaimed himself as "not a great novelist". The reason he felt this was probably because he was not able to abide by the standards that he himself set as the qualifications for great novels. This is, at least, the primary objection to be made toward The Longest Journey. In Aspects of the Novel Forster writes, "The novelist who betrays too much interest in his own method can never be more than interesting; he has given up the creation of character and summoned us to help analyse his own mind, and a heavy drop in the emotional thermometer results". The obsessive control of style as an opposition to the driving story he wanted to tell in The Longest Journey proves to be a fatal merging of a novelist who wants to keep with the artistic innovations of his time. Forster is too aware of his use of stylistic method to make the novel a wholly satisfactory piece of literature. Yet, because there is so much of Forster in the novel, it remains a very interesting book to serious and passionate readers.