Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly | 9780226115047 | Get Textbooks | New Textbooks | Used Textbooks

“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 pensée that Connolly utters, but that’s one of the joys of this book.”—Nick Hornby, The Believer

“A remarkable book.”—Anthony Powell

		Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly, Alex Woloch (Foreword) ISBN-10: 9780226115047 ISBN-10: 0-226-11504-6 ISBN-13: 9780226115047 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11504-7 Paperback 2008-07-01 University Of Chicago Press Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Product Description “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 pensée that Connolly utters, but that’s one of the joys of this book.”—Nick Hornby, The Believer “A remarkable book.”—Anthony Powell
Reviews

An Unnecessary Book In this, his most famous work, Cyril Connolly refers to George Orwell's assessment of "Picture of Dorian Gray" as an unnecessary book, an opinion with which he comes to concur. After finishing this work, I can bring the same charge here. Startling in 1938 when it was first written in its sexual frankness and exposure of the corporal discipline at the public schools of the time, it has since outlived its relevancy, ironic as it is the topic it is ostensibly most concerned with, literary immortality (defined as being read for at least 10 years). The book is divided into 3 sections, the first having to do with varying literary styles (the Mandarin versus the Vernacular), the second with the Enemies of Promise (what makes a writer not live up to his or her potential) and lastly a memoir of his boyhood ending with his graduation from Eton and entrance to Oxford, having just the most superficial connection with the first two . The first section comes across as a parlor game (similar to placing writers in Isaiah Berlin's Hedgehog or Fox classification system) and ultimately no more helpful than that. The second is full of advice that frequently seems dated and often sexist (writers are encouraged not to have children as the "pram in the hallway" is just a distraction, unless you have a wife willing to deal with said pram and allow you to work). Only the last section, wonderfully written, recalling the petty motivations of boyhood and the intensity of the drive for the "glittering prizes" at Eton, holds up, and even this section goes into details of personalities that were important to the writer but mean little to the reader. As an editor and critic, Connolly accomplished much in his lifetime but now he is mostly forgotten except for this work, which ultimately is an explanation of why he didn't accomplish more. While it has its intermittent charms and interest, and certainly has historical importance, it is not a work that need have lasted the above mentioned 10 years, no less the 78 years this reprint has allowed.