But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwert Yuiop and Other Writings [Hardcover]

Anthony Burgess (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There seems to be nothing Anthony Burgess can't write. Over the past decades, he has created a large body of critically acclaimed fiction (A Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers, etc.), criticism (The Novel Now, Joysprick and book-length nonfiction (Language Made Plain, etc.) that have made him one of the most respected writers in the English language. At the same time, as this 600-page collection attests, he has been producing reams of high-quality journalism covering travel, food, music, people, film, astrology, language and, above all, literature. This collection of his short pieces from the last seven years, mostly book reviews, displays an impressive diversity and acuity. Burgess is a master reviewer: pithy, polymathic without pedantry, quick to find a virtue or fault, often witty and always, at bottom, generous. Many of the pieces ("Grunts from a Sexist Pig," "Yidglish," "What Shakespeare Smelt," etc.) are well-known favorites. Less familiar are his interesting considerations of such half-forgotten figures as George Borrow, G. K. Chesterton and Ford Madox Ford. His evaluation of the Frenchtoo much Descartes in their bloodstream, not enough Rabelaisprovokes and amuses. Also included are perceptive essays on American contemporaries such as Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. This wide-ranging collection is incredibly rich. 25,000 first printing; 25,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In nearly 200 reviews and essays written for the Times Literary Supplement , the Observer , and the New York Times , Burgess thrusts his canny, sensitive mind into regions as diverse as fashion, film, musical theater, structural linguistics, religion, literature, music, travel, and feminism. While evenhanded on the strengths and weaknesses of John Updike and Norman Mailer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Leonard Bernstein, he is occasionally uncompromising: Joyce is the great novelist of the century, Ford the best English novelist, Pound the best poet. He is most elegantly provocative when polymathic perversegracious to Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly, and Yves St. Laurent, brutal to feminists, those he finds culturally arrogant (the French and certain academics), and the culturally deprived (the younger generation). Burgess's field of intellectual energy is supercharged, and enlightenment bolts in all directions. Recommended. Arthur Waldhorn, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 589 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill; First Edition edition (February 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070089779
• ISBN-13: 978-0070089778
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,845,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Burgess (25th February 1917-22nd November 1993) was one of the UK's leading academics and most respected literary figures. A prolific author, during his writing career Burgess found success as a novelist, critic, composer, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer, essayist, poet and librettist, as well as working as a translator, broadcaster, linguist and educationalist. His fiction also includes NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life, but he is perhaps most famous for the complex and controversial novel A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, exploring the nature of evil. Born in Manchester, he spent time living in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England, until his death in 1993.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good company, this Burgess fellow, March 15, 2000

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwert Yuiop and Other Writings (Hardcover)

I've read only a few Anthony Burgess novels (the Orange and _1985_) and keep meaning to get around to _Earthly Powers_ and _A Dead Man in Deptford_, but I sure enjoy his nonfiction. The two volumes of his autobio come highly recommended. And this.

A pity this big ol' honkin' collection of essays is out of print. Burgess covers the waterfront, from other writers ("Mailer may need money to pay his multiple alimony, but he is selling out to something nastier than commerce") to travel ("There is, I see too late, an _estofado de toro_ on the menu, and I wonder if this is at all like the son-of-a-bitch stew (pizzle, testes and all, washed down by Bloody Marys) that I met in Montana"); from the English language to the conducting and composition of classical music (each of which he did a bit). There is plenty of wit and penetrating insight to spare.

Most memorable are his pieces on fashion designers and models ("A friend of mine slept with one of these exquisite dream figures and said it was like going to bed with a bicycle"), the state of Utah (the last place he got "stinking incapable drunk ... because there are no bars"), and a great predecessor:

"Recount Jane Austen's life to a class in an American university, and there will be unseemly expressions of shock that she knew nothing about life, man, meaning like well never slept with a guy and like well was stuck in a crappy old house without an icebox.... That I am twenty years and [biographer] Lord [Cecil] David thirty-five years older than she was when she died represents no advantage to either of us. We have not produced her novels. She remains not only a formidable artist who would demolish both of us (well, certainly me, if she thought me worth demolishing or even taking notice of) in a couple of lines; she testifies formidably to the truth that we have nothing to teach her about how to live the good life, nor, for that matter, anything to teach her age about the right true end of civilization."

One last wonderful item, from the essay "Thanatic": "While I am being personal I may as well offer my father's dying words, which I heard clearly: 'Bugger the priest. Give me a pint of draught Bass.' "