Where Did it All Go Right?: Al Alvarez - Hardcover

Alvarez, Al

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860661734 ISBN 13: 9781860661730

Publisher: Metro Books, London, 1999

Synopsis

Al Alvarez has been at the centre of British literary life for nearly 40 years. His 1969 study of suicide, "The savage god", is recognised as a classic. As poetry editor of "The Observer" in its heyday, Alvarez knew, influenced and was friends with an extraordinary array of writers - Auden, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, John Berryman (who, like Plath, committed suicide), John le Carre (his next-door neighbour), and many more. He was born into a prosperous North London Jewish family of caterers. He went to Oundle and to Oxford where, unusually for a budding poet, he was a keen and successful sportsman. He went on to write poetry, novels, literary criticism and a host of non-fiction. So far so true. What such a description hides is the extraordinary array of characters that Alvarez vividly brings to life. Remember the two grandmothers in "Cider with Rosie"? Al Alvarez had grandfathers too. His best friend flies aeroplanes upside down. His first marriage was a (highly entertaining for us) disaster, from which he emerged to write a compelling study of divorce (beginning with Sterne's epigram: "When a man marries, he must realise he gives up forever the pleasure of lying diagonally in bed").

About this title

Review

Poker player, novelist, critic, rock-climber, failed suicide--Al Alvarez is a man of many parts and they are all presented here with endearing candour. He records that "my first 30 years were purgatory"--but that in retrospect, the next 40 were so blissfully happy as to seem almost uneventful in comparison. So the greater part of this autobiography is occupied with those first 30, storm-tossed years. He was born in the1930s, into a family of wealthy Hampstead Jews who, though educated, were strangely ignorant of events in Germany. They had a nanny, a cook, two parlour-maids in mop caps, a chauffeur and an under-nurse--and they were always complaining that they didn't have enough money. They were assimilated Jews who ate bacon but Alvarez is very acute on the degree to which this assimilation really went. He states that he is a Londoner but not an Englishman. His early adult life is vividly chronicled as a struggling writer, unhappily married, stuck doing wretched theatre reviews of plays called things like The Amorous Prawn and teetering on the brink of self-destruction. Against this grim picture there are some delightful pen portraits of the famous people he has known: Iris Murdoch at Oxford, "with a bell of blonde hair, a broad face and a gruff, forthright manner, like one of Eisenstein's peasants"; Kingsley Amis, with "lips curling, eyes popping and rolling" at the very mention of the word "Modernism" and Alvarez's own tutor at Oxford, who habitually introduced himself to complete strangers at parties with the immortal words, "My name's Robson. I'm impotent." There is also a lengthy passage focusing on Alvarez's friendship with Sylvia Plath just before her suicide in 1963, which he originally wrote about in The Savage God. An acute, candid and often very funny self- portrait from a tough cookie of a writer. -- Christopher Hart

Review

"A truly fascinating autobiography" -- Sunday Telegraph, 30th June 2002

‘A fascinating account of life led in the crowded margins of contemporary literature’ -- Observer

‘A gem . . . it cuts an irreverent path through seventy glorious and inglorious years of women, poker, adventuring, writing and wondering’ -- John le Carré

‘An exhilarating story of redemption’ -- Daily Telegraph

Edition details

• Publisher: Metro Books, London
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1860661734
• ISBN 13: 9781860661730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352