#Cyril Connolly

[humbababa]

Half a bee, philisophically, must ipso facto half not be.

But half a bee has got to be, vis a vie it's entity, you see?

But can a bee be said to be, or not to be, an entire bee, when half the bee is not a bee, due to some ancient injury?

[famousdeaths]

Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–49) and wrote Enemies...

Link: Cyril Connolly

[fairest]

Who is "Addison" today and can we hold them responsbile? Who is "Bacon" today?

From Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise

[linusjf]

Cyril Connolly: Love and pain

“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. ” —Cyril Connolly. Love & Pain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[cliffordthurlow]

THE SMELL OF DEAD DREAMS

We take flowers to the hospital when we visit the sick and dying without reflecting on the irony that cut flowers are already dead and their scent is to shield us from the smell of dead dreams.  A Literary History of the Smell of Dead Dreams We see on our death bed, not our whole life flashing before us – as with a drowning man – but an endless sequence of all the things we had wanted to do and…

[elegantzombielite]

"Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control."

Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (10th September 1903-1974)

[proverbiumseniorum]

"The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life."---Cyril Connolly, English literary critic, 1903-1974

[whenibecameaparentireadbooks]

Time Enemy

Five Minutes’ Peace By Jill Murphy Walker Books, 1986 Time is different when you’re a parent. You don’t have it the way you used to. How you spend it is not really your choice anymore. If you’re not looking after the kids, you’re doing housework. If you’re not doing housework, you’re working. If you’re not working, you’re doing life admin.  Instead of having time, you snatch time. A quick…

[culturevulturette]

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Cyril Connolly

[grandhotelabyss]

Ever read "Enemies of Promise" by Cyril Connolly? His opinion that political activism is one of the deadliest of these enemies for a young writer reminds me of your own advocacy for quietism. If you have read him what are your thoughts on his theory of literary survival, that the main aspiration for a writer should be writing works which are still read ten years after? Is this theory disproven by writers like Melville, who weren't popular during their lives but are rediscovered posthumously?

No, but I always meant to read it. If I understand the theory correctly, it's rather proven than disproven by the Melvilles (Dickinsons, Kafkas, etc.) since the point is to be bigger than whatever ephemera seduces by mere immediacy. I do think the activist impulse, if you can't quell it, should be confined to literary activism, against censorship or the imprisonment of writers or whatever. You should try to quell it, though. The Foucauldian cynicism applies: all resistance is processed into more power. The writer should stand outside these weary processes as their eternal witness and accuser. Plus, I always liked that line from the end of Morrison's Invisibles, from a character who gave up her role in the anarchist conspiracy: "I stopped needing to save the world...saving is what misers do..." Especially now: activism might have been one thing in the past, in the abolitionist days, for example, but contemporary activists are synergized with the neoliberal regime as the vanguard of its aspiration—as a former community organizer trained in the urban Democratic Party politics Tom Wolfe analyzed in the 1960s under a no doubt offensive rubric, Obama was always quite candid about this—so an activist-author today is little better than a state apparatchik, an acknowledged foot-soldier of powers and principalities rather than an unacknowledged legislator of the world.

[theblackestofsuns]

The Condemned Playground (1945)

Cyril Connolly

The Hogarth Press

[lunamarish]

Meglio scrivere per se stessi e non avere un pubblico, che scrivere per il pubblico e non avere se stessi.

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly

[linusjf]

MK Gandhi and Cyril Connolly: Obesity and poverty

Image via Wikipedia “Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.” —Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974). Poverty is the worst form of violence. —Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948).

[pluttskutt]

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

― Cyril Connolly

[martiko]

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

Cyril Connolly

[cssnder]

The Books I Read or Re-Read During The Writing of My Novel

Whenever I work on a project, I tend to read the books that influenced me most in my own writing or books that are thematically relevant to what I am working on. Thus, I present to you the books I have read or re-read that have influenced and shaped Thus Saith The Lord. Please note that, since it'll take a few years before the completion of my novel, I will keep updating this list.

The Holy Bible

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The Trouble With Being Born, Emil Cioran.

On The Heights of Despair, Emil Cioran.

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt.

Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert.

The Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh.

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.

The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus, Cyril Connolly.

Stoner, John Williams.

My Mother, George Bataille.