Reviews for Alfred Tennyson

The average rating for Alfred Tennyson based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-09-25 00:00:00 Yiu Lam Moore's 'confessions' are aesthetic. If there's more, you'll find a soul struggling to rid itself of Victorian morality. Of landed gentry, Moore moved fr Ireland to Paris in his 20s hoping to be a painter. He immersed himself in Degas, Manet and discussed Gautier, Baudelaire at his Montmartre haunt until dawn. This memoir was finished in his early 30s after he decided to become a writer. He first tried journalism which he found stifling: "I longed to give a personal shape to something and this could not be achieved in an article." His memoir is youthfully all over the place, at times, but it's stuffed with alluring ideas. He prefers Marlowe to Shakespeare, his literary ideal is Balzac, and why, he asks, must Henry James avoid decisive 'action'-- why is everything suppressed? Respectability is a "killing octopus," he avers; education destroys humanity, the masses only appreciate conventionality, "home" is the antithesis of freedom, books attract us like people (often for the same reasons) and art reflects the "the spirit of an age." When it comes to the flesh, he grabs us by the collar: "Hypocritical reader," he zaps, "if you had the courage and money to lead a fast life, wouldn't you do so?" Best remembered of youth in Paris: "The smells of every hour. Eggs frizzling in butter, the pungent cigarette, coffee and cognac, the fragrant odour of absinthe; and the steaming soup." A worldling whose work was admired by Joyce-Stein, he became friends with the American culture maven Carl Van Vechten whose extravagant novel "Peter Whiffle" he somehow inspired. Whiffle even has an orange cat named George Moore. Says Peter Whiffle: "I've come to the conclusion that the only thing to do was live, just as fully as possible." The sentiment belongs to George Moore and I don't mean the cat.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-28 00:00:00 Amir Denton There are those who claim to have finished books by George Moore, but I don't believe them.