The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books By John Carey

I am currently reading my copy from the library and purchased the book for my grandson about to enter Harrow School. It should introduce him to a wide selection of books to read. Easy to read! John Carey Tutto. Libro interessante, commovente, divertente, istruttivo John Carey El libro pertenece a un género híbrido. Son, sin duda, unas memorias pero también una reflexión o ensayo sobre los libros y el amor a los libros. El autor arranca con una descripción de aquella Inglaterra en la que nació, tan distinta de la actual, y avanza en su narración explicándonos algo de sus as (poco, lo suficiente) y, sobre todo, cómo deviene 'professor' de literatura en Oxford, mostrándonos la vida de un enseñante en tan ilustre ciudad. La obra es rica es comentarios sobre libros, mostrándonos sus filias y sus fobias (por cierto, no le gusta 'El Quijote', que supongo leería en traducción), y está lleno de ideas y opiniones sobre posibles libros que pudieran interesarnos. Su capacidad de trabajo es legendaria. En una ocasión nos comenta que dedicó el tiempo libre de cuatro años de su vida a traducir del latín una oscura obra teológica de Milton: setecientas páginas de letra pequeña, por la que adquirió prestigio pero no cobró nada. El principal activo del libro es esa característica tan difícil de definir: el encanto. Muy bien escrito, elegante, sensible, humano. Lo dicho, una excelente sorpresa. John Carey As an Inspector Morse fan, Oxford always holds a mystique for me. What would it be like to attend the University and teach there? This book answers those questions partly. The author attended, and then later taught in the English department. As one gets older, biographies are often interesting than fiction as the events really happened. The autobiography answers how that person got from A to Z. John Carey didn't come from a wealthy, literate family. Through his own intelligence and hard work he attained his positions: professor, author and book reviewer.While I would have liked about life in the classroom at Oxford, this book did offer some insights into Oxford life. Carey tells us that Oxford now is very different than when he attended as a student. It is a worthy read. John Carey You don't have to have gone to grammar school, or loved Wordsworth, or Shakespeare's `Antony and Cleopatra', or George Eliot, or Seamus Heaney's `Death of a Naturalist', to identify with and enjoy this book. Still less do you have to have been anywhere near Oxford, never mind studied there. There is something for everyone (well, everyone who reads) in this latest offering by John Carey and, given Carey's egalitarian philosophy, that is just as it should be. You will probably get out of the book if you know Donne (I don't), Milton (my knowledge is scanty) and a few among the wealth of writers Carey espouses from Elizabethan times to the late twentieth century but don't be put off by a lack of literary learning. A little knowledge is a wonderful thing. You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that DH Lawrence was something of a fascist as well as a misogynist (I paraphrase); you may be shocked, as I was, to hear terrible truths of WB Yeats whose works I have always admired. You don't have to have been led, as Carey was (and I was too) to literature by membership of a church choir; we all come to literature in different ways and anyone just about anywhere reading Carey's latest offering will find in it, somewhere, something to identify with. You don't have to agree with everything he says of course not. As a woman and a feminist I am annoyed that he says little enough about women writers, not least Virginia Woolf, despite his acknowledgment elsewhere of the wrongs suffered by women. You don't have to be of the older generation, as I am, although twenty years younger than Carey, to identify with the bygone era of Carey's youth, a time long before the internet, computers and even television. The book is, of course, not merely a treatise on literature. As the title suggests, it is intensely autobiographical. One of the most surprising and funny (and yes the book is full of humour) early parts, I found, were the pages on Carey's National Service. When he comes to Oxford he is rightly disparaging about the snobbery and absurd rituals although he too is part of the same establishment. One of the things I liked most about the book was that Carey reflected on where he was when he was reading a particular book something many readers like myself will identify with, even if the books, time and place were entirely different. His account of being sent out into the corridor in the hospital to await the birth of his first child made me laugh: `I tried to read an Agatha Christie but it didn't seem to make any sense.'Carey goes on to tell of his second career as a reviewer. He tells of how Seamus Heaney thanked him for a review something that most of us probably forget to do although we get angry when we get bad ones. Carey himself was sensitive to this before he began publishing outside the narrow world of academia: `sentences that delight you with their wit and acuity when you write them can be horribly hurtful to the wretched creature at whom they are aimed.' I have my own reasons to thank John Carey. In October 2003 he was kind enough to include in an article in the Sunday Times a few words on my book `Eating Wolves' when it was published by a tiny press (Dewi Lewis). The article was about books he had liked when he was reading them as part of his work chairing the Booker Prize. Those few kind words meant I sold at least a few hundred books and libraries round the country ordered copies. In 2006 Carey was at the Edinburgh Book Festival and read from his work `What Good Are the Arts?' I went to hear him and afterwards saw him wandering round with his wife. I wanted to thank him but was too shy to approach him. I may have expected a rebuff or perhaps thought it was too late. Now I have a second opportunity. John Carey

The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books : Carey, John: : Boeken The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books

free read  eBook or Kindle ePUB ☆ John Carey