Party in the Blitz: The English Years

Description

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." Cover title page OUT OF ENGLAND NO-ONE IN ENGLAND OR THE SILENCE OF CONTEMPT AMERSHAM "DURRIS" STUBBS WOOD, CHESHAM BOIS THE STREET SWEEPER HERBERT READ VICES AND VIRTUES OF ENGLISH PARTIES HAMPSTEAD: AT A GATHERING OF POETS KATHLEEN RAJNE AYMER AND HIS MOTHER VISIT IN MOCHRUM LORD DAVID STEWART MRS PHILLIMORE BERTRAND RUSSELL ARTHUR WALEY DIANA SPEARMAN ENOCH POWELL VERONICA WEDGWOOD MISERY AT PARTIES FRANZ STEINER DOWNSHIRE HILL J. D. BERNAL GEOFFREY PYKE FREDDIE UHLMAN CE POIDS! CE POIDS! HENRY MOORE AND ROLAND PENROSE THE PARTY IN THE BLITZ THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN HAMPSTEAD HEATH HAMPSTEAD CHURCH ROW THE CEMETERY THE PARTY AT PENROSE'S THE FIREMEN THE FREEMASONS ARMS FRIEDL FRIEDL'S GENEROSITY THE BLOUSE STEVIE SMITH OSKAR KOKOSCHKA IRIS MURDOCH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS AYMER ENGLAND, AN ISLAND SPEED SOME VARIETIES OF ARROGANCE AFTERWORD NOTE ON THE TEXT LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NOTES