Al Alvarez – författare

What makes good writing good? In his brilliant new book, Al Alvarez argues that it is the development of the voice - voice as distinct from style - that makes a writer great. A poet as well as a critic, Al Alvarez approaches his subject both as an informed observer and an insider. Here are - among others - Sylvia Plath, John Donne, Jean Rhys, Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Coleridge and W. B. Yeats, dissected with clarity, depth and a profound understanding of the mechanics of writing. Like the best literary criticism, "The Writer's Voice" makes writing come vividly alive. Written with passion and insight, it is the ideal gift for anyone who loves to read.

Al Alvarez, poet, critic, novelist, sportsman, and poker player, has for seventy years been hard to categorize. He is the author of the best-selling study of suicide, "The Savage God", and as poetry editor of the "Observer", he has known most of the leading poets of the second half of last century. For a time he was an influential critic and his anthology "The New Poetry" scandalised the literary community. Much of the liveliness of Alvarez's story is inspired by the ambiguous fate of being an English Jew. Although his family had been settled in London for more than two centuries, being Jewish always made them feel like outsiders. He went from Oundle, an English public school, to Oxford, where an academic career beckoned; instead he embarked on life as a freelance writer. Meanwhile he climbed mountains, played poker and wrote books about these pastimes which are now regarded as classics. "Where Did It All Go Right?" is his memorable, irreverent account of that journey.

Using the untimely death of the poet and friend, Sylvia Plath, as a point of departure, Al Alvarez confronts the controversial and often taboo area of human behaviour: suicide. "The Savage God" explores the cultural attitudes, theories, truths and fallacies surrounding suicide and refracts them through the windows of philosophy, art and literature: following the black thread leading from Dante, through Donne, Chatterton and the Romantic Agony, to Dada and Pavese. Entwined within this sensitive study is the author's deeply personal account of his own unsuccessful suicide attempt, and together they form the most fascinating and compelling meditation on the "Savage God" at the heart of human existence.

Feeding the Rat is the story of an extraordinary man: climbing legend Mo Anthoine, who found his greatet joy in adventures that tested the far limits of human endurance. That passion for "feeding the rat" made him the unsung hero of dozens of horrifying epics in the mountains, including the famous ogre expedition that nearly killed Doug Scott and sir Chris Bonington. The book is also the story of the extraordinary friendship between Mo and adrenaline junky Al Alvarez - the distinguished poet, journalist and critic - whose deeply moving portrait of his longtim climbing partner is a classic of adventure literature.

Al Alvarez's writing career has come in many guises. One of the most influential post-war critics, he has written profoundly and eloquently about writers and their craft for over fifty years. But Alvarez has also been a passionate amateur of risky pursuits - poker playing, mountaineering, flying in aeroplanes - and he has written about these subjects with a rare depth, liveliness and perception. This is a collection of his finest essays. Ranging from trenchant literary criticism to accounts of polar expeditions and poker championships, "Risky Business" is a sparkling and eclectic anthology from our most unusual man of letters.

From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good nightThe ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty – from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person’s Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss – Swimming, Sex and Sleep.As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be – to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he’s not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life’s small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night._____________________'A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move' Sunday Times'The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts' The Times'A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing – its success is against the odds' Observer