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The Unbearable Bassington
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Manufacturer: Aegypan
Author: Saki, H., H. Munro
Publisher: Aegypan
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Aegypan
Author: Saki, H., H. Munro
Publisher: Aegypan
Average Customer Rating:
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The Unbearable Bassington Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781603120357
ISBN: 1603120351
Label: Aegypan
Manufacturer: Aegypan
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 120
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Publisher: Aegypan
Studio: Aegypan
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781603120357
ISBN: 1603120351
Label: Aegypan
Manufacturer: Aegypan
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 120
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Publisher: Aegypan
Studio: Aegypan
Editorial Review of The Unbearable Bassington
Francesca Bassington -- mother of The Unbearable Bassington -- was one of those women towards whom Fate appears to have the best intentions and never to carry them into practice. Fate had done her good service in providing her with Henry for a brother, but Francesca could well set the plaguy malice of the destiny that had given her Comus for a son. The boy was one of those untamable young lords of misrule . . . he was irresponsible and ungrateful -- the focus of his corner of British society. And what could be done with him. . . ? Send him off to the colonies, was what.
Customer Reviews of The Unbearable Bassington
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: BEARABLY SUBLIME
Review: I turned to Saki after giving up on Ronald Firbank, and the contrast is instructive. In any Firbank, camp novelties abound (e.g., the British consul named Sir Something Somebody) yet they are unsupported by anything like a story, so in time the reader is driven away as if he were served bones without meat at a swank restaurant. Saki offers everything Firbank does not, and in his minute, satiric observance of the English upper class, he is the heir to Oscar Wilde. Saki rejects the phony moralism of "Dorian Gray" for the untroubled insouciance of Wilde's story "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime." The result is "The Unbearable Bassington," a rare gem among Edwardian novels. In this teeming, perfect work, Saki not only inherits the mantle of Wilde; he trumps him decisively.
Start with a little perseverance. Chapter One of "Bassington" is tedious, unfocused, and discouraging, but get to the end of it and you are rewarded by Chapter Two, so alarmingly pungent it may be the finest quantum of prose in Saki's entire output. After that, the delights never end. A treasure-trove of epigrams twinkles in every fold of this marvelous story, a portrait of Edwardians as knowing as anything Wilde ever wrote. But we are shocked to discern real, pulsing lives behind Saki's screen of artifice. Wilde never cared about his characters as much as the language used to tell about them, whereas Saki cares about both characters and language, and delivers grandly on both.
Review Summary: BEARABLY SUBLIME
Review: I turned to Saki after giving up on Ronald Firbank, and the contrast is instructive. In any Firbank, camp novelties abound (e.g., the British consul named Sir Something Somebody) yet they are unsupported by anything like a story, so in time the reader is driven away as if he were served bones without meat at a swank restaurant. Saki offers everything Firbank does not, and in his minute, satiric observance of the English upper class, he is the heir to Oscar Wilde. Saki rejects the phony moralism of "Dorian Gray" for the untroubled insouciance of Wilde's story "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime." The result is "The Unbearable Bassington," a rare gem among Edwardian novels. In this teeming, perfect work, Saki not only inherits the mantle of Wilde; he trumps him decisively.
Start with a little perseverance. Chapter One of "Bassington" is tedious, unfocused, and discouraging, but get to the end of it and you are rewarded by Chapter Two, so alarmingly pungent it may be the finest quantum of prose in Saki's entire output. After that, the delights never end. A treasure-trove of epigrams twinkles in every fold of this marvelous story, a portrait of Edwardians as knowing as anything Wilde ever wrote. But we are shocked to discern real, pulsing lives behind Saki's screen of artifice. Wilde never cared about his characters as much as the language used to tell about them, whereas Saki cares about both characters and language, and delivers grandly on both.