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5.0 out of 5 stars
On third reading, after 30 years,
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This review is from: The Wild Goose Chase (Paperback)
Jonathan Swift meets Franz Kafka meets Voltaire meets Fritz Laing meets Friedrich Engels meets Alexei Sayle meets Henry Fielding, or summat like that. I read this book as an impressionable youngster and it changed my life, as did Voltaire's Candide and Fielding's Tom Jones (in much the same way). But on re and rerereading, I genuinely believe this to be a greater work than any one of them. It combines the picaresque tradition with a surreal (and bloody funny!) hunt for political and spiritual integrity. In doing so it lays waste to the political-economics we live by. There are extremely strong images of corruption, exploitation, cruelty, insanity... but all the time we are seeing it through the ingenuous eyes of a hero rather like Blackadder's George (as played by Hugh Laurie).
It's taken me 30 years to work out what the ending means. Rex Warner was right. See for yourself. In 1937, in writing his very first novel, he got it 100% right about the century still to come. This is my favourite novel of the 20th century. It's appalling that the book has been passed over so totally. I only wish someone decent would make a movie of it. It'd knock Metropolis for dead -- even the first one. |
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The Wild Goose Chase by Rex Warner (Hardcover - 1947)
Used & New from: $14.10
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