The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold,Used

Product Description'The very model of the modern paranoid novel' (New York Times) and an ambitious work of semiautobiographical fiction from one of England's greatest novelists.Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness.Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic publicaddress system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship . . . until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him!Review'The very model of the modern paranoid novel.'John Leonard, New York Times'Unblinking candor informs Waugh's dark, comic vision.'William Boyd, Daily Telegraph'Waugh's 'portrait of the artist in middle age' . . . is a genuine gothic horror, a gargoyle to terrify anyone who has ever contemplated a literary career. . . . The acid bath so often prepared for others has now found its way into his own tub. . . . Waugh draws an intimate picture of a distinguished author at bay.'Gerald Sykes, New York Times Book Review'The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a masterpiece of selfportraiture, one of the very best in English fiction.'John Bailey'A masterpiece. . . . Waugh's clearsightedness about himself . . . is something which, in this taut, brilliantly phrased and crafted story, is itself an assertion of order out of chaos.'A. N. WilsonAbout the AuthorEvelyn Waugh (19031966), whom Time called 'one of the century's great masters of English prose,' wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.The Ordeal of Gilbert PinfoldBy Evelyn Waugh Little, Brown and CompanyCopyright 2012 Evelyn WaughAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780316216654OnePortrait of the Artist in MiddleAgeIt may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century. The originators, the exuberant men, are extinct and in their place subsists and modestly flourishes a generation notable for elegance and variety of contrivance. It may well happen that there are lean years ahead in which our posterity will look back hungrily to this period, when there was so much will and so much ability to please.Among these novelists Mr. Gilbert Pinfold stood quite high. At the time of his adventure, at the age of fifty, he had written a dozen books all of which were still bought and read. They were translated into most languages and in the United States of America enjoyed intermittent but lucrative seasons of favor. Foreign students often chose them as the subject for theses, but those who sought to detect cosmic significance in Mr. Pinfolds work, to relate it to fashions in philosophy, social predicaments or psychological tensions, were baffled by his frank, curt replies to their questionnaires; their fellows in the English Literature School, who chose more egotistical writers, often found their theses more than half composed for them. Mr. Pinfold gave nothing away. Not that he was secretive or grudging by nature; he had nothing to give these students. He regarded his books as objects which he had made, things quite external to himself to be used and judged by others. He thought them well made, better than many reputed works of genius, but he was not vain of his a