Kevin Jackson
The Critic’s Critic
The Ink Trade: Selected Journalism 1961–1993
By Anthony Burgess (Edited by Will Carr)
Carcanet 274pp £19.99
This volume is made up almost entirely of Anthony Burgess’s book reviews and literary essays for The Guardian, The Observer, The Listener, the New York Times and The Spectator – for the most part, that is, for publications aimed at a fairly literate general readership, not at scholars and academics. He needed, then, the talent to amuse as well as to instruct, to praise, to question and to pooh-pooh, and he had those talents in abundance. Burgess also had another crucial virtue, as one of his literary editors, Peter Green, once pointed out in a BBC interview: he was a pro. You could always rely on him to file on time and at the agreed length, and his copy was so well crafted that only a fool or a creep would feel the need to tinker with it. As Green said, these are qualities for which an editor would cheerfully kill.
The Ink Trade begins with his jape – well known to Burgess fans – of writing a review for the Yorkshire Post of a novel by one Joseph Kell, who was in fact Burgess himself. Guessing that his editor had sent him the book as a kind of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk