Reviews

The Unquiet Grave by Palinurus

henryv's review against another edition

5.0

As Cyril Connolly himself writes, "What follows are the doubts and reflections of a year, a word-cycle in three or four rhythms; art, love, nature and religion: an experiment in self dismantling..." This fragmentary method of writing, with quotes, aphorisms, epigrams, allusions, from a litany of great writers, thinkers, and diarists, with sudden reflections on love, the loss of love, spirituality, desire, literature, art, and psychology are the collected musings of Cyril Connolly, first published in 1944 in Horizon, the magazine he was founder and editor for. My favourite parts of his writing are the plentiful poetic depictions of the scene, usually with the aid of perspicacious and evocative lists, revealing the interior life of the poetic author: "Dead leaves, coffee grounds, grenadine, tabac Maryland, mental expectation - perfumes of the Nord-Sud; autumn arrival at Pigalle..."

This book is a literary sketch or prayer book, overflowing with ideas and impressions, deeply felt articulations of the psyche, of collated philosophies, of what constitutes one's being, often pitched with crystalline melancholy providing momentary and heartfelt illuminations away from any unnecessary or phoney narratives.

margaret_adams's review against another edition

Once I started Connolly's "The Unquiet Grave" I had to finish it. The author's declarative air leaves no conceptual oxygen for anything else to breathe while you're reading it. It helps that his declarations are interesting, disquieting, encouraging of debate even as they emanate authority. Books are the only art with doing! Women are cruel and unusual but also nicer than men! Life is shit! We're all doomed! Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable! I'm in the habit of using my phone to take photos of book pages with quotes or passages that are intriguing to me, especially when it's a borrowed book and I don't want to underline; I snapped photos of a third of the pages in this book before finishing it off in two sittings. I'm still digesting what I read, but a few immediate takeaways: 1) this guy, either by era or by nature, has never fallen prey to the ubiquity of "seems," and 2) a third of the way into the book I kept thinking I would like to find Connolly's wife, buy her a stiff drink, then sit back and let the tape recorder roll.

lucasmiller's review against another edition

3.0

Adolescent, bitter, whimsical, and obsessed with France. The untranslated French does end up becoming burdensome, but it fits the overall attitude of the author. He's not writing for people who can't read French. My five stars have more to do with the intent and form than with the actual content. Unlikely to read it again, I still love Hemingway's assessment, a book that no matter how many readers it has, will never have enough readers.