Party in the Blitz: The English Years

A stunning and unexpected new volume of Elias Canetti's autobiography. A surprise gift to celebrate the Nobel Laureate's 100th birthday.

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, at 85, beset by the desire to come to terms with his years of exile in Britain, wrote Party in the Blitz, He waited half a century to confront these memories, perhaps because in order to be truthful, I should have to track down every needless humiliation I was offered in England, and relive it as the torture it was. Party in the Blitz dissects that torture with unrestrained acerbity, recounting the ordeal of being in a new country where not a soul knew his writing. But not one to be ignored, the godmonster of Hempstead (as John Bayley dubbed Canetti) soon knew everyone and everyone knew him. Enoch Powell, Bertrand Russell, Iris Murdoch, Empson, Wittgenstein, Kokoshka, Kathleen Raine, Henry Moore, Ralph Vaughn Williams: Canetti knew them all, and in Party in the Blitz he mercilessly rakes some of them over the coals. He detested T.S. Eliot and came to bitterly despise Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair: Every word of his devastating portrait of her quivers with rage. He must have been a frequent party-goer, as Jeremy Adler remarks in his excellent afterword, to judge by the well-informed distaste with which he recalls them. Gorgeously translated by Michael Hofmann, Party in the Blitz lives up to Canetti's injunction that when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

"It's easy to see why Bulgarian Nobel Prize winner Canetti's memoir of his years of British exile caused a stir upon its German publication: frank to the point of rudeness, acerbic to the point of crankiness, the author (who died in 1994) had a long memory and several scores to settle. The book's most sustained invective is directed at T.S. Eliot and Iris Murdoch, and whether one agrees with Canetti or not, his eloquently sustained loathing is bracing stuff. For Canetti, Eliot's commanding power over literary life in England signaled the country's decline from its 17th-century heights. That 'a libertine of the void, a foothill of Hegel, a desecrator of Dante... thin lipped, cold hearted, prematurely old' could consign Milton and Keats to the margins while controlling the careers of numerous living writers was to Canetti an outrage that the years did nothing to assuage. And his recollections of 'the bubbling Oxford stewpot,' Iris Murdoch — with whom he had an affair — are, if less than gallant, a useful corrective to the sentimentalities of the Murdoch industry. Canetti also presents numerous other figures, from sinologist Arthur Waley to politician Enoch Powell, from sculptor Henry Moore to historian C.V. Wedgewood, in bold, unsparing strokes. But through all his varied adventures, Canetti's affection for the English people and their institutions remains undiminished. Part memoir, part history, part sociological enquiry, this volume is the rough-edged pendant of a remarkable career. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Newly discovered in 2003 and not previously available in English, this final chapter of Canetti's autobiography reviews Canetti's years of exile in Britain after he fled Austria. Canetti recounts with rage and contempt his association with some of Britain's most famous literati, including T.S. Eliot and Iris Murdoch. The author of a novel, essays, plays and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981, Canetti is best remembered for his first three volumes of memoirs.
Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, at 85, beset by the desire to come to terms with his years of exile in Britain, wrote

Controversial and an extraordinary memoir of Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti, written during his life in WWII London. Exceedingly perceptive, at times amusing and always unpredictable, this fourth volume in the Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti's autobiography is a fascinating and enjoyable read.