And even now [Hardcover]

Max Beerbohm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1950

Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dutton (1950)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0007EQRLU
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Some extraordinary essays, January 7, 2012

By 

Ernest Davis (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: And even now (Paperback)

"And Even Now" is the best of several published collections of essays by Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm was a very uneven writer, even within a single essay; some of these have not worn well, and now appear merely arch and precious. But four of the pieces in this book are among the most remarkable light essays I have read, and I reread them again and again. "How shall I word it" is a laugh-out-loud funny collection of imaginary nasty letters; from a customer refusing to pay a tailor's bill; from a voter celebrating the defeat of a elected official he loathes; from a bride "thanking" a wedding guest for a "little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china" and so on. "No. 2 the Pines" is a memoir of Beerbohm's meetings with the poet Swinburne in his old age. " 'A Clergyman' " is a rumination on a man known only through a single question quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson. "William and Mary" is a charming, moving, memoir of two of Beerbohm's friends who died young. These four by themselves are well worth the purchase price (or looking it up in gutenberg.org).

I have not seen this reprint edition, and cannot vouch for its physical quality.

3.0 out of 5 stars Well!, January 26, 2011

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: And Even Now (Kindle Edition)

I like funny things, and when I was a boy it was a commonplace among my family that there had never been a man funny as the "incomparable Max." His plots and sentences were endlessly quoted and even the names of his characters were so amusing one had only to be whispered and the entire household joined in raucous laughter. His novel Zuleika Dobson, and his volumes of short stories Seven Men and Two Others, and A Christmas Garland (parodies of Edwardian writers, each one set at Christmastime), may I suppose live on in the history of writing, and I know people today, even young people, who enjoy them no end. And appreciation for his famous caricatures seems to be ever on the increase, particularly with the internet where many of them are widely seen by people from all over the world.

But then there's a book like AND EVEN NOW, first published in 1920, a collection of essays and memoirs. Once it sparkled like champagne, now it's, well, flat. Some of it is unfortunately dated, but these pieces do not seem appreciably worse than those that have not dated a jot, for all of them share the same essence, the flavor of having been written by a man who loves the sound of his own voice and thinks he's the cat's pajamas. My students rebelled when I asked them to read the Beerbohm classic, "Going Out for a Walk." It is filled with the wit and paradox we expect from Beerbohm--the thing turns into a tremendous peroration about why walks are horrible and ends up, "I will never go out for a walk." Very Fran Lebowitz, right? Another level of depth is added by Beerbohm's frequent resort to misty memories of a long time ago, before tax exile in Rapallo and before modern ways made society boring. The first essay in "And Even Now" (you can hear the figure of time passing in the title) is called, "A Relic." He's the relic in one sense, but basically he unpacks an old case and finds a scrap of writing in his own hand--a single sentence. "Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle." From that sentence a whole seacastle of memory instantly grows and closes over the mind of the old man--a structure of feeling, the memory of having written a great sentence and needing something the set it off, needing a plot to bring up the pathos. It is clever and it is moving, but funny it's not.

Beerbohm is more modernist than he is amusing. I think nowadays people want a David Sedaris to show them the funny side of life. Beerbohm's curiosities repel, often as not, and his position as a selfstyled "Tory anarchist" is a little bit on the Sarah Palin side. I wish they would make a movie about him like the KING'S SPEECH movie, showing how he helped George VI prepare for invasion by Germany by returning from Rapallo and murmuring nonsense into his ear to lift up the beleaguered monarch's fancy. Colin Firth can continue to play George VI, but I think we need Ian McKellen to gain about seventy-five pounds and play the hell out of Max Beerbohm, the necessary man.