The Black Book [Hardcover]

Lawrence Durrell (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Dutton; First Edition. states edition (1960)
• ASIN: B001F3ICUQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Durrell's third novel showed promise of what was to come, October 2, 1997

By 

William Nedblake ([e-mail].... (Kansas City, Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Book (Paperback)

Lawrence Durrell had two novels to his credit ('Pied Piper of Lovers' and 'Panic Spring') when T.S. Eliot, Durrell's editor at Faber & Faber, said that 'The Black Book' was 'the first piece of work by a new English writer to give me any hope for the future of prose fiction'. In a complex tale set in a seedy London hotel, Durrell spun a narrative which was to foreshadow his best-known work of two decades later, the Alexandria Quartet in its dealings with time, characterisation, and narrative. Memorable characters and rich prose swirl around the central figure of Lawrence Lucifer. Considered unpublishable in 1937, it did not find its way into print in Britain until 1961. Well worth the time if you find a copy.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read, quivering with youthful energy, December 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Black Book (Paperback)

This was Durrell's first major novel, & anticipates many of the ideas which would dominate his later works. While the book is slightly derivative in regard to Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer', it goes far beyond Miller's idea of the Western death-consciousness, and is wonderfully inventive and energetic. As a response to James Joyce, it is a portrait of the artist as an ANGRY young man. Well worth the time and cost.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books. Gorgeous use of language., January 26, 2004

By 

Campbell Roark "tri-zeta" (from under the floorboards and through the woods...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Book (Hardcover)

This is a magnificent book. The legend around it is that Durrell sent the manuscript for this to Henry Miller, in Paris, and asked that he read it and then toss it in the Seine... Miller read it, and obviously did not cast it away, instead helped to have it published... TS Eliot was one of the guys responsible for getting this out. So goes the name dropping...

Now, I'm not a fan of Miller's works. Sue me, the guy just doesn't appeal to my sensibilities... And most of Lawrence Durrell's later novels don't do much for me either- I'm not sure what it is, I feel like the power of The Black Book, all its vigor and spleen, all that lyrical spite became diminished, somehow. I love the language of this book. The fisrt couple pages- I can read them over and over. I've read them to my little brother, my mother, several girlfriends...

All values are personal in their manifestation- as I said, I have read parts of this (my favorite parts) to people before and they were not as moved as I was. So I'm not claiming this to be the key text that will unlock 20th C. literature for you (look to Celine for that!). It's just highly reccommended to you as an angry denunciation of a world long gone. The author is trapped in his values, his place, his class and he wants to burn it all away, tear it all down- all the emptiness, the lack of connection, the bald hypocrisy and the babbling of the masses. The lies and the desolate souls around him that murmur... But he can't help loving the world he loathes, the beauty and transience of it... and can't help but loathe himself for loving it... I'm rambling... And I haven't said a thing about plot or characters... So be it.

If you are a fan of Isaac Babel, Platonov, John Kennedy Toole, Charles Portis, TS Eliot, Sartre, Henry Miller, Wallace Stevens, John Fowles, Calvino, Tibor Fischer, Unamuno, Burroughs... There's some slice of similarity in all those writers...