New Criterion, February 1st, 1999
Jeremy Lewis Cyril Connolly: A Life. Jonathan Cape/Pimlico, 653 pages, $50; $19.95 paper To the writer Cyril Connolly, his own flawed character was a limitless literary goldmine, a dark gift beyond measure. In Enemies of Promise (1938) and The Unquiet Grave (1945), his sui generis confessions-cum-self-lacerations, he wrote with wit and candor about his famous failings: snobbery, gluttony, nostalgia, cowardice, paralyzing perfectionism, and, above all, sloth. To Connolly the man, however, the selfsame character was an unmixed curse, and his clear-eyed knowledge of it the crux of his life. He l...
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