The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus [Paperback]

Cyril Connolly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2005

This enduring classic is "a book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough" (Ernest Hemingway).

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) was one of the most influential book reviewers and critics in England, contributing regularly to The New Statesmen, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. His essays have been collected in book form and published to wide acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. The Unquiet Grave is considered by many to be his most enduring work. It is a highly personal journal written during the devastation of World War II, filled with reflective passages that deal with aging, the break-up of a long term relationship, and the horrors of the war around him. It is also a wonderfully varied intellectual feast: a collection of aphorisms, epigrams, and quotations from such masters of European literature as Horace, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Goethe. Dazzlingly original in both form and content, The Unquiet Grave has continued to influence generations of writers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough. -- Ernest Hemingway

That The Unquiet Grave has been published in paperback by Persea means that civilization has a chance. -- John Leonard, The New York Times

About the Author

Among Cyril Connolly's many books include The Unquiet Grave, Enemies of Promise, The Condemned Playground, Ideas and Places, The Modern Movement, and The Rock Pool.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Persea; 2 edition (July 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892550589
• ISBN-13: 978-0892550586
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the few books I would insist any wisdom seeker reads., March 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus (Paperback)

The writer Cyril Connolly states in this book that if an author wishes to write a book that lasts a thousand years, then they must learn to use invisible ink. In the first paragraph he also comments that the only objective of a writer is to produce a masterpiece, and no other task is of any consequence. In this book he achieved both. His exquisite prose is an embarrasing reminder of how the quality of English as a written language has deteriorated since this book was published in 1944. He achieves a unique insight into human nature as perceived from his high ground as a scholar of the classical school: His most famous quote from this book "Inside every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out" is trite compared to his other observations on human relationships, the nature of civilisation and the creative process. In one extraordinary, incisive paragraph he explains why so many couples break up despite the fact that they still love each other, and his summation of the three requisites for the creation of a work of art (Validity of the myth, the vigour of belief and the intensity of creation) goes some considerable way to explain the incompatibility of modern and classic art. Every individual to whom I lend a copy ends up copying out vast tracts of the text, or buying a copy outright. As a busy General Medical Practitioner, I would argue that there could be no greater nor more condensed wisdom so beautifully described in one short book. I am concerned that this book is once again out of print - will anyone out there publish it again?

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unwittingly, a masterpiece, March 19, 2006

By 

Sirin (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus (Paperback)

Cyril Connolly was a prolifically talented schoolboy. Tipped by many for great literary achievement, he wore the burden of this promise like a ball and chain for the rest of his life, anxiously ruminating on greatness.

He was one of the best read men of his generation, and felt that the virgin snow where Shakespeare and Montaigne cut their initial, deep furrows had since become flattened by innumerable tracks so it was no longer able to receive an impression.

Connolly was a great epicurian intellectual, a man whose mind watches itself in Camus' definition. He brooded obsessively on the human condition, admiring those writers who spat in the eye of the ephemeral fame and glory of their own era to follow the solitary and near impossible road to producing a great masterpiece.

A multitude of journalism, a small novel was written, but the masterpiece Connolly was tipped for never came.

But wait. In the course of a lifetime anxiously pondering, well, life itself, Connolly accumulated a hoard of aphorisms that relate to the human being as he or she passes through the stages of life, some of them from the great writers he admired, some of them his own. Here are some choice cuts:

(From Eliot): ''Someone said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.'

'The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.'

'Everything is a dangerous drug to me except reality, which is unendurable.'

'I am now forced to admit that anxiety is my true condition, occasionally intruded on by work, pleasure, melancholy or despair.'

The quote from Hemingway on the cover of my paperback edition holds true: 'A book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough.'

A masterpiece arrived at through the back door.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It makes you think, December 14, 1999

By 

Peter Wilson (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus (Paperback)

The Unquiet Grave smells of the mannered ways of the English Middle Class before WW2. It has a certain pretentiousness which will repel some but open doors for others. It consists of paragraphs each of which contain a thought culled mostly from the wisdom literature of the last 3 millennia. Not all these thoughts are attributed, so some are presumably those of the author. They do, however, hang together well and may spark a high rate of response in their reader. Connolly does seem to reflect the anxious yearning for direction and certainty which infects many. Those people who current wisdom says should be secure in our modern world but who feel anything but secure will find the book reflecting their uncertainties. It will strike more chords in California than Bosnia, and some of the chords will be life enhancing.