Party in the Blitz: The English Years [Hardcover]

Elias Canetti (Author), Michael Hofmann (Translator), Jeremy Adler (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2005

A stunning and unexpected new volume of Elias Canetti's autobiography. A surprise gift to celebrate the Nobel Laureate's 100th birthday.

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, at 85, beset by the desire to come to terms with his years of exile in Britain, wrote Party in the Blitz. He waited half a century to confront these memories, perhaps because "in order to be truthful, I should have to track down every needless humiliation I was offered in England, and relive it as the torture it was." Party in the Blitz dissects that torture with unrestrained acerbity, recounting the ordeal of being in a new country where not a soul knew his writing. But not one to be ignored, "the godmonster of Hempstead" (as John Bayley dubbed Canetti) soon knew everyone and everyone knew him. Enoch Powell, Bertrand Russell, Iris Murdoch, Empson, Wittgenstein, Kokoshka, Kathleen Raine, Henry Moore, Ralph Vaughn Williams: Canetti knew them all, and in Party in the Blitz he mercilessly rakes some of them over the coals. He detested T.S. Eliot and came to bitterly despise Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair: Every word of his devastating portrait of her quivers with rage. "He must have been a frequent party-goer," as Jeremy Adler remarks in his excellent afterword, "to judge by the well-informed distaste with which he recalls them." Gorgeously translated by Michael Hofmann, Party in the Blitz lives up to Canetti's injunction that "when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's easy to see why Bulgarian Nobel Prize winner Canetti's memoir of his years of British exile caused a stir upon its German publication: frank to the point of rudeness, acerbic to the point of crankiness, the author (who died in 1994) had a long memory and several scores to settle. The book's most sustained invective is directed at T.S. Eliot and Iris Murdoch, and whether one agrees with Canetti or not, his eloquently sustained loathing is bracing stuff. For Canetti, Eliot's commanding power over literary life in England signaled the country's decline from its 17th-century heights. That "a libertine of the void, a foothill of Hegel, a desecrator of Dante... thin lipped, cold hearted, prematurely old" could consign Milton and Keats to the margins while controlling the careers of numerous living writers was to Canetti an outrage that the years did nothing to assuage. And his recollections of "the bubbling Oxford stewpot," Iris Murdoch—with whom he had an affair—are, if less than gallant, a useful corrective to the sentimentalities of the Murdoch industry. Canetti also presents numerous other figures, from sinologist Arthur Waley to politician Enoch Powell, from sculptor Henry Moore to historian C.V. Wedgewood, in bold, unsparing strokes. But through all his varied adventures, Canetti's affection for the English people and their institutions remains undiminished. Part memoir, part history, part sociological enquiry, this volume is the rough-edged pendant of a remarkable career. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

In 1939 Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti fled north of London to Hampstead and there with his wife, Veza, weathered Hitler's air war among a most distinguished company of fellow novelists and poets. The future Nobel laureate, a man of withering observation and of supreme self-centeredness and introspection, Canetti recalls those who crossed his path in those desperate years. Always quick to judge and often betraying what seems mere petty jealousy on his part, Canetti savages his comrades. He cannot abide that T. S. Eliot might be patient with those whose talents were less exalted. Canetti's opinion of Dylan Thomas is only slightly more generous. Despite Canetti's stated disdain for the social whirl and his claim to feel nowhere else "more miserable and solitary than at parties," he makes a remarkable number of appearances at them and uses these events as observation platforms into the world of English classism. Students of literary life of this era will find this memoir overflowing with general observations, but specific, unprejudiced insights may be substantially fewer in number. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (September 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216365
• ISBN-13: 978-0811216364
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Canetti on Canetti, April 2, 2006

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Wolfsegg - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Party in the Blitz: The English Years (Hardcover)

I worship the late Elias Canetti. If nobody's heard of him, it's because we live in a culture that is fundamentally ignorant and under-educated. CROWDS AND POWER should be required reading in every school in this nation. Canetti's cycle of memoirs collectively comprises some of the best intellectual history of the twentieth century. PARTY IN THE BLITZ is the great man's last piss-blast in the face of a world he saw as hostile, stupid, and bent on destruction. The price of this book is justified alone by what Canetti says about T.S. Elliot. Elliot was one of the biggest anti-semites of all time, a cold prude who hated Jews, wrote bad pretentious poetry so arcane it needed footnotes (which he himself supplied), and desperately wanted to be an Englishman when in fact he was from St. Louis, Missouri. Canetti recognized what a sham Elliot was, and doesn't hesitate to let us know what Elliot was really like, through the eyes of an objective observer and not some fawning Catholic biographer.

It's true that Canetti rips just about everyone to shreds in this book, but he has some amazingly kind things to say, too. He remembers, for instance, a mere street sweeper, who he talked to just in passing for many years, and whom he considered one of the most intelligent men he ever met. Canetti was a man who refused to suffer fools; he despised airs and pretentiousness. He was probably one of the most intelligent men of his age, which was almost certainly his great curse. He saw through the masks people wear, the illusions they use to disguise their flaws and insecurities, with ease. It was this great lucidity of his, this ability to perceive and understand things as they really are, that made him impatient, and ultimately, incredibly bitter.

11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Party of One, October 21, 2005

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Christian Schlect (Yakima, Washington/USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Party in the Blitz: The English Years (Hardcover)

I would wager that this is a Nobel Prize winning author most Americans (including me, prior to reading this book) have not heard of, let alone read. And from this memoir of that part of his life while living in England-- mostly during World War II--, it will probably stay that way.

Elias Canetti comes off as an arrogant, dour, and self-centered intellectual with brutal views of some women and fellow authors and no discernable concern that-- apparently-- he made no meaningful contribution to the war effort of that good country which hosted and protected him during a time of extreme trials.

He seems to me an example of the type of high intellectual who thinks nothing of being utterly cruel toward individuals in print, then wonders why countries so stupidly go to war.

From this patched together book, one can appreciate the essence of Mr.Canetti's fine writing skills without being brought to liking this now deceased author.

The useful afterword by Jeremy Adler is very good in that it puts both the book and the author into some context for the non-expert reader.