review ↠ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook Ð Tom Sharpe
Când cineva îl întreba pe Frensic de ce prizează tutun, el răspundea că o face fiindcă, de fapt şi de drept, s‑ar fi cuvenit să trăiască în secolul al XVIII‑lea. Zicea că era secolul cel mai potrivit cu temperamentul şi stilul lui de viaţă, doar era epoca raţiunii, a eleganţei, a evoluţiei şi progresului şi a celorlalte trăsături pe care era atât de limpede că le avea şi el. Ceea ce nu avea – şi aflase cumva că nici secolul al XVIII‑lea nu avusese – nu făcea decât să‑i accentueze plăcerea faţă de propria‑i afectare şi uimirea celor care îl ascultau, ba chiar, lucru destul de paradoxal, îi justifica pretenţia de a împărtăşi acelaşi spaţiu familiar cu Sterne, Swift, Smollett, Richardson, Fielding şi alţi giganţi ai începuturilor romanului, al căror talent Frensic îl admira atât de mult.
Deoarece Frensic era un agent literar care dispreţuia aproape toate romanele pe care le plasase cu atât de mult succes, avea un secol al XVIII‑lea propriu şi personal, cel de pe Grub Street şi Gin Lane, pe care eroul nostru îl omagia afectând o excentricitate şi un cinism ce‑i creaseră o reputaţie folositoare şi, concomitent, o pavăză împotriva pretenţiilor literare ale autorilor nevandabili. Pe scurt, Frensic făcea baie rar, purta veste de lână vara, mânca mult mai mult decât i‑ar fi picat bine, bea vin negru înainte de prânz şi priza tutun în cantităţi respectabile, aşa că oricine voia să aibă de‑a face cu el trebuia să‑şi dovedească tăria îndurând cu stoicism aceste deprinderi deplorabile. Apoi, Frensic sosea devreme la lucru, citea fiecare manuscris care îi era expediat, le returna cu promptitudine pe cele care nu erau vandabile, iar pe celelalte le vindea cu aceeaşi promptitudine, în general administrându‑şi afacerea cu o eficienţă uimitoare. Când Frensic zicea că o carte o să se vândă, atunci se vindea. Avea nas pentru best-seller-uri – unul infailibil.
Îi plăcea să creadă că nasul îl moştenise de la tatăl său, care fusese un excelent comerciant de vinuri. Oricum, lucrând în domeniul vinurilor roşii, plăcute şi foarte accesibile ca preţ, nasul părintelui său achitase costisitoarele studii ale lui Frensic, iar aceste studii, împreună cu nasul mai metafizic cu care fusese dăruit Frensic, îi creaseră acestuia un avantaj în faţa concurenţilor din branşă. Nu că ar fi existat vreo legătură directă între educaţia lui Frensic şi succesul lui de connaisseur al literaturii dătătoare de satisfacţii comerciale. Bătuse cale lungă până să‑şi descopere vocaţia şi dacă admiraţia lui pentru secolul al XVIII‑lea, deşi reală, ascundea totuşi o dorinţă de retragere în trecut, exact acesta fusese şi procesul prin care Frensic ajunsese să se bucure de succes ca agent literar.
Literature Fiction Great fun. Literature Fiction *** Possible Spoilers ***
For me, this was the best of all the Tom Sharpe books. I think, perhaps, he was putting much of himself in this one seeing as it focuses on writing. In it he takes no prisoners. He skewers authors, publishers, agents, critics, readers and marketing. Among the authors, he takes a few pointed shots at classical writers such as Fitzgerald and Conrad but, presumably wary of libel, stays away from most who are still alive. There may be one exception. This book was published in 1977. One of the characters is very much into ecology and has the woods around her and her husband's mansion stocked with bears. There are a number of suggestions - all of which are refuted with disgust by the husband - the woman is 'into bears'. The husband character makes a point of ridiculing the idea and saying no woman could possibly be into bears. That's about the end of it; however, in 1976, Marion Engel published Bear, a story in which a woman is, most definitely into bears, or at least one bear and not in the ecological sense. I don't know if Tom Sharpe read that book but it's possible. Unfortunately he's dead and can't be asked.
Know at the outset, if you don't like black humour and farce, you won't like this. In addition, I doubt younger readers would enjoy it. I suggest the ideal reader is older, reasonably widely read, and has utter contempt for what passes as award winning literature these days. If you're looking for character arcs and delving into the human psyche, take a pass on this one. There are a plethora of books out there of that nature, but this isn't one of them. Literature Fiction Divertidísima novela que es a la vez comedia de enriedos y crítica literaria que no deja títere con cabeza. La maestría con la que Sharpe destripa a la sociedad de consumo (de libros) de su país es sublime. Ojalá en algún momento me la pueda releer, aunque creo que antes debería darle prioridad a otras obras del autor. Literature Fiction Διασκεδαστικότατο ευθυμογράφημα που σαρκάζει τον σκοτεινό, παρασκηνιακό κόσμο της Λογοτεχνίας που οι περισσότεροι από εμάς αγνοούμε.
Εύστοχος στις Παρατηρήσεις του Ο Sharpe, καταγράφει ένα μυθιστόρημα εμποτισμένο με αυθεντικό αγγλικό χιούμορ και καταιγιστική δράση ( γνωστή ευρέως και ως Αμερικανια!).
Μου άρεσε, σαν ευχάριστο ελαφρύ διάβασμα μα δυστυχώς κατ εμέ, δεν καταφέρνει να καταρρίψει τα όρια του καλού στο πολύ καλό και εν συνεχεία για το καταπληκτικό. Literature Fiction
Whatever it was Tom Sharpe was pursuing, he got lost halfway through. Literature Fiction Caustic humor is a long and noble British tradition. What sets Tom Sharpe ahead of the pack is not the depth of his perversion (which is deep enough) or the sheer volume of comic mayhem that he can squeeze into two hundred pages, but that he can make you laugh out loud at the most appalling things, and keep you coming back for more.
Part of his secret is that the stories are laced with Awful Truth. It’s hard to conceive that a writer who uses penis mutilation as a recurring motif and whose characters habitually cavort in rubber rooms and sex-toy factories might have something important to say. Sharpe is driven by a deep-seated anger at the system, and it’s the anger that powers the black extremes of his humor.
The other part of his secret is harder to express in a short recommendation: because, yes, the books are charming in a sick adult sort of way, and this charm of style seldom fails even when Sharpe is describing (in his South African series Indecent Exposure and Riotous Assembly) the efforts of white Afrikaners to eliminate black Africans by raping black women, or (in The Throwback) the efforts of a young man to hang onto his inheritance by having his dead grandfather stuffed and wired for sound. Look, I don’t expect you to believe me: read the books and find out for yourselves. Reading Tom Sharpe is a test of character — try him and see if you pass.
THE GREAT PURSUIT is the most benign of his books -- and has some wonderful things to say about the publishing industry. Literature Fiction The book grows on the reader as the plot thickens. Sharpe has a certain way to attract the reader that I cannot really put into words, but his books always make for a great past time. The last passage was very interesting of how even the most incompetent of men can hijack history and it really got me thinking. Generally, I'd say if you find a book with Tom Sharpe written on it, grab it without hesitation. Literature Fiction Amuzant, dar plicticos pe alocuri. Personajul Wilt mi s-a părut mai reușit. Literature Fiction
There’s a hilarious skit from the Monty Python boys where Graham Chapman is wearing the peaked cap and uniform of an army colonel from the waist up along with a ballerina’s tutu and pink leotards. The comedy is all in the contrast.
Likewise, in Tom Sharpe's 1977 novel The Great Pursuit, the fun and funniness derive from stark contrasts, the disparity of opposites brought together in outrageous and ingenious combinations.
The story revolves around the publishing industry, novel writing and literary theory. Like so many novelists from Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov, from Mario Vargas Llosa to John Gardner and Milan Kundera, in The Great Pursuit, Tom Sharpe likewise turns his attention to the process of writing itself.
Of course, we are taking about the king of extreme Monty Pythonesque British satire here, so all the many unexpected shifts and sudden reversals are best left to the reader to discover. Thus I’ll say nary a word about plot development; rather, here's a quartet of ingredients that makes Tom Sharpe's stinging stew delectable:
PRUDE AND PORNOGRAPHY
London literary agent Frensic seizes an opportunity to make a fortune by pushing a pornographic trash novel about a love and lust affair between a seventeen-year-old boy and an eighty-year-old woman a la Harold and Maude. Alack, a dilemma: the author of this piece of commercial crap doesn’t want to be identified. But the London and especially the American publisher need a writer to take a blockbuster publicity tour to launch the book which could sell copies in the millions.
Frensic knows just the man for the job - prudish, mousy, no talent novelist wannabe Peter Piper who has been slugging away for years on his own turgid, unpublishable autobiographical tome, Search for a Lost Childhood, featuring “significant relationships” and high-minded morals. Piper reluctantly agrees to go along with this charade since Frensic will have Search published after Piper's successful tour as author of pornographic Pause O Men For The Virgin.
STRANGLE HOLD ON ART
A Tom Sharpe major spoof is on the literary theory of F.R. Leavis, an early to mid-20th century British critic proscribing harsh moral codes and proposing The Great Tradition of Jane Austen, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, meanwhile judging Charles Dickens, Laurence Sterne and Thomas Hardy as mere entertainers.
And what where some of the reactions of creative writers and thinkers at the time? Poet Edith Sitwell described Leavis as a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak. Stephen Fry called him a sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance. Meanwhile, for Peter Piper, Leavis is a god worthy of veneration. Piper's guide for writing is The Moral Novel by Sydney Louth based on Leavis' theory.
Tom Sharpe has a merry old time exposing the ways in which such moralizing and uppity intentions ring the death toll for the imagination and smother vitality both in writing and in life. One can imagine F.R. Leavis (1895-1978) wrinkling his nose and shaking his head if he ever read a Tom Sharpe novel.
PIFFLING POOPSTICK PUBLISHING PEOPLE
Publishing houses on both sides of the Atlantic are targets for the author's lampoon-harpoons. The disregard for literary standards in favor of moneymaking is chiefly personified by an American (of course!) - Hutchmeyer, a semi-illiterate, bigmouth, blustering mogul, a sort of cross between Donald Trump and Bozo the Clown with a reputation as the Al Capone of publishing.
One of the more rollicking parts of the novel is Piper's interactions with Hutchmeyer. Inflame their sexual fantasies? yelled Hutchmeyer, interrupting this quotation from The Moral Novel. You sit there and tell me you don't hold with books that inflame their readers' sexual fantasies when you've written the filthiest book since Last Exit?
LAND OF THE FREE AND SLEEZY
In addition to poking a finger in the eye of America’s crude commercialism, many are the zingers hurled at the people living in the USA - an uncouth, shallow, violent, philistine, bigoted lot we are to be sure and Tom Sharpe takes no Yankee prisoners.
The cheapness and tawdriness of Americans is personified by Hutchmeyer’s wife, Baby. Baby has had every square inch of her face, chin, boobs and sundry parts of her aging body treated to plastic surgery and other rejuvenating arts. At one point Baby has to admit: “All that was gone now, the longing to be young again and the sense of knowing she was still sexually attractive. Only death remained and the certainly that when she died there would be no call for the embalmer. She had seen to that in advance.”
And Tom Sharpe’s needle even travels to the American Deep South. The Great Pursuit rivals Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit in performing a literary scorching of the land of Dixie.
The Great Pursuit doesn't possess the blistering mockery of his two earlier novels about the South African police force, Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, probably because the publishing world does have some people with brains as opposed to the nitwit police he portrays.
But still, The Great Pursuit makes for a lively, laugh-out-loud read. And you certainly will not want to miss Piper's catastrophe when interviewed for British television or Piper being attacked by Americans from groups left and right when he lands in New York City, or Piper's romance (believe it or not) with Baby.
British novelist Tom Sharpe, 1928-2013
Listen, he said, you try promoting a foreign writer. He's got to have a gimmick like he's won the Nobel Prize or been tortured in the Lubianka or something. Charisma. Now what's this Piper got? Nothing. So we build him up. We have ourselves a little riot, a bit of blood and all and overnight he's charismatic. And with those bandages he's going to be in every home tonight on TV. Sell a million copies on that face alone.
- Tom Sharpe, The Great Pursuit Literature Fiction
Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business.
One day, a manuscript for a book called Pause O Men for the Virgin arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has carte blanche on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year-old woman and a 17-year-old youth.
The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of Pause from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.
An innocent abroad in the States, Piper is the unwitting cause of confusion upon confusion, disaster upon disaster. The Great Pursuit