Risky Business : People, Pastimes, Poker and Books
Author(s): Al Alvarez
Al Alvarez's writing career has come in many guises. One of the most influential post-war critics, he has written profoundly and eloquently about writers and their craft for over fifty years. But Alvarez has also been a passionate amateur of risky pursuits - poker playing, mountaineering, flying in aeroplanes - and he has written about these subjects with a rare depth, liveliness and perception. This is a collection of his finest essays. Ranging from trenchant literary criticism to accounts of polar expeditions and poker championships, "Risky Business" is a sparkling and eclectic anthology from our most unusual man of letters.
First published 2007.
Product Information
This is the essential Al Alvarez - the only book to contain the full range of his writing and the book all his fans will wantIncludes Alvarez on some of the literary greats of the twentieth century: Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, Alice Munro and Philip Larkin For fans of Frank Kermode, Martin Amis's The War Against Cliche and James Wood's The Irresponsible Self
'In a book this good, in the company of a mind this judicious and fine, the reader is left wanting more' Daily Telegraph 'Essays about everything from risk, poker and exploration, to Philip Roth, Edward Lear and Jean Rhys' Scotsman 'Word- and pitch-perfect ... unalloyed Alvarez' The Times 'Marvellous ... clear, unpretentious, insightful' Observer
Al Alvarez is a poet, novelist, literary critic, anthologist and author of many highly praised non-fiction books on topics ranging from suicide, divorce and dreams - The Savage God, Life After Marriage, Night - to poker, North Sea oil and mountaineering - The Biggest Game in Town, Offshore, Feeding the Rat. His most recent books are New and Selected Poems and The Writer's Voice. He lives in London.
General Fields
- :
- : Bloomsbury
- : bloomsbury
- : 0.249
- : 01 January 2008
- : 198mm X 129mm X 14mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Al Alvarez
- : Paperback
- : English
- : 824.914
- : very good
- : 416
