But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwert Yuiop, and Other Writings

by Anthony Burgess

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070089779
• ISBN13: 9780070089778
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 589 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Very good company, this Burgess fellow

I've read only a few Anthony Burgess novels (the Orange and _1985_) and keep meaning to get around to _Earthly Powers_ and _A Dead Man in Deptford_, but I sure enjoy his nonfiction. The two volumes of his autobio come highly recommended. And this.A pity this big ol' honkin' collection of essays is out of print. Burgess covers the waterfront, from other writers ("Mailer may need money to pay his multiple alimony, but he is selling out to something nastier than commerce") to travel ("There is, I see too late, an _estofado de toro_ on the menu, and I wonder if this is at all like the son-of-a-bitch stew (pizzle, testes and all, washed down by Bloody Marys) that I met in Montana"); from the English language to the conducting and composition of classical music (each of which he did a bit). There is plenty of wit and penetrating insight to spare.Most memorable are his pieces on fashion designers and models ("A friend of mine slept with one of these exquisite dream figures and said it was like going to bed with a bicycle"), the state of Utah (the last place he got "stinking incapable drunk ... because there are no bars"), and a great predecessor:"Recount Jane Austen's life to a class in an American university, and there will be unseemly expressions of shock that she knew nothing about life, man, meaning like well never slept with a guy and like well was stuck in a crappy old house without an icebox.... That I am twenty years and [biographer] Lord [Cecil] David thirty-five years older than she was when she died represents no advantage to either of us. We have not produced her novels. She remains not only a formidable artist who would demolish both of us (well, certainly me, if she thought me worth demolishing or even taking notice of) in a couple of lines; she testifies formidably to the truth that we have nothing to teach her about how to live the good life, nor, for that matter, anything to teach her age about the right true end of civilization."One last wonderful item, from the essay "Thanatic": "While I am being personal I may as well offer my father's dying words, which I heard clearly: 'Bugger the priest. Give me a pint of draught Bass.' "