For Love & Money: A Writing Life 1969-1989 [Hardcover]

Jonathan Raban (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his travel writing ( Arabia and Old Glory ), Raban has also been a teacher and critic, and in these recollections covering 20 years he integrates selections from his book reviews and occasional pieces with autobiographical musings as "Shelleyblake." Raban's world encompasses English and American literature (from Byron and Thackeray to Robert Lowell and Tom Wolfe), travel writers (Stevenson, Freya Stark, Belloc and Edmund Wilson), the English cyclone of 1987, the delights of fishing and his own experiences in the Cape Verde Islands and the Florida Keys. In this storehouse of literary pleasures his remarks about writers are vigorous and unexpected: "Trollope's exploration of social terror is in some ways very close to Kafka's exploration of psychological terror"; Evelyn Waugh makes the Sitwells sound absurd "by reporting on them with the deadly accuracy of an unsmiling child"; Huckleberry Finn is not a masterpiece in the ordinary sense, but "it is the only novel in American literature that has the permanent, enchanting and mysterious power of an ancient myth."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

These witty and incisive essays by the English author of the best-selling Old Glory: An American Voyage ( LJ 9/15/81) amply demonstrate that Raban is a master of the vanishing art of literary journalism. Whether written to order, or for the unremunerated pleasure of writing for its own sake, Raban's prose is consistently well wrought and cogent. Widely read and traveled, he discourses on subjects as diverse as sailing, the literary life, Florida, childhood, London, playwriting, and various masters of modern British and American fiction. In an age of overly hermetic criticism, it is refreshing to encounter a writer who finds his ideal audience in the "common reader." Admirers of Raban's other books, or of just plain good writing, will find this highly satisfying.
- Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch. Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060161663
• ISBN-13: 978-0060161668
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,006,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Writing Life, March 24, 2000

By 

Lee Polevoi "lpolevoi" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For Love & Money: A Writing Life 1969-1989 (Hardcover)

Jonathan Raban has a lively, quirky writing style: there's considerable energy in his prose and it's enlivened by a dry, British wit and high degree of self-effacement. That's what makes this far-ranging miscellany mostly a pleasure to read. From humble, studious origins, Raban recounts his trials as a fledgling book critic -- hard-working and underpaid -- in the snobbish literary circles of 70s and 80s London. Unfortunately he also inserts chapters here and there purporting to be a fictional account of a frustrated reviewer; it's difficult to tell Raban's intentions with this device, because when he sticks to "true-to-life" stories he's nearly always entertaining and enlightening. There are incisive studies of classic and contemporary authors -- from Trollope to Updike -- but what mostly rewards the reader are articles based on his travels. Even early on that was his strong point. In all, not major Raban, but well worth reading for his many fans.

4.0 out of 5 stars The book reviews are the best part of this work, March 19, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: For Love & Money: A Writing Life 1969-1989 (Hardcover)

This volume contains a mixture of different kinds of writing. It opens with an autobiographical essay on Raban's childhood. It contains fictional narratives of various kinds. It discusses the English writing scene at the time Raban was coming of age as a writer. It contains samples of the travel- writing which Raban is perhaps most known for. I however found the most insightful and interesting parts of the book the book- reviews. Books on Byron, Trollope, Thackery,Kipling Evelyn Waugh, V.S. Pritchett, Bellow, Updike,Anthony Powell, Peter Quennel are skillfully reviewed.
My favorite of these was the piece on Trollope. Raban relates the work to the life and shows how the awkward, rejected in childhood Trollope wrote works in which the characters fear of social rejection is central. Raban shows the heroic side of Trollope- his overcoming in his writing much of what he could not overcome in his life. Raban also writes interestingly of spendthrift chaotic Byron whose lack of any self- control brought such devastation to the lives of others.
In the final essay of the work Raban writes of his going to Sea as a way of escaping the narrow vistas and imprisonment of his own small life.
There is a great deal of interesting observation in these essays, though they fall short of being on the emotional level very powerful work.