Injury Time
A Memoir
Published on 21. February 2019
192 pages
978-1-4464-4864-9 (ISBN)
Description
The distinguished poet, essayist and critic D. J. Enright died on the last day of December 2002. He had just put the finishing touches to Injury Time, a memoir and his third commonplace book in which the dying writer muses upon his own condition and that of the world he knows he is leaving.
Comparing himself to the Chinese scholar Sima Qian, who chose an 'ignoble punishment' (in Dennis Enright's case, treatment for his cancer; in Qian's, castration) over respectable death in order to finish a book, he contemplates literature, manners, morals, people and, especially, the English language in all its glories and eccentricities - while recording his battle against cancer and his hospital experiences.
Moving, and at times deeply poignant, imbued with its author's legendary humanity and wit, Injury Time is, nevertheless, funny, bracing and, above all, positive.
Comparing himself to the Chinese scholar Sima Qian, who chose an 'ignoble punishment' (in Dennis Enright's case, treatment for his cancer; in Qian's, castration) over respectable death in order to finish a book, he contemplates literature, manners, morals, people and, especially, the English language in all its glories and eccentricities - while recording his battle against cancer and his hospital experiences.
Moving, and at times deeply poignant, imbued with its author's legendary humanity and wit, Injury Time is, nevertheless, funny, bracing and, above all, positive.
Reviews / Votes
One of the most outstanding writers of his generation - an admirable poet, a wise critic and much more besides -- John Gross * Sunday Telegraph * The needling, questing Enright imagination finds as much to be happy about in the ridiculous as it does in the greatest glories of literature and art -- William Trevor * Spectator * Injury Time is the final part of his trilogy of commonplace books, and the most moving. Shadowed by the prognosis of death and defiantly funny even about that... A marvellous book * Guardian * His gentle manner makes his occasional sharp judgements all the more devastating -- Robert Conquest * Times Literary Supplement * D.J.Enright's learning is not only prodigious, it is pertinent... [His literature] would help to restore humanism to the universities if it could be handed out to new students at the gate -- Clive JamesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
Interest Age: From 0 years
File size
1,10 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4464-4864-9 (9781446448649)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2003
Pimlico
€35.48
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Person
Born in 1920, educated at Leamington College and Downing College, Cambridge, D. J. Enright spent over twenty years teaching English at universities in Egypt, Japan, Berlin, Thailand, and Singapore. He returned to London in 1970 and later became a director of London publishers Chatto & Windus. First and foremost a poet, he published many collections in over fifty years, including Collected Poems: 1948-98 (1998), and translations from Japanese and German verse. He wrote novels for both adults and children, and revised with Madeleine Enright the English translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1992), while his enormous output of non-fiction includes his Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (1969), a number of critical works, and several anthologies, among them The Oxford Book of Death (1983) and The Faber Book of Fevers and Frets (1989). Observations on life (high and low), literature, morals and manners, human or animal, are recorded in The Way of the Cat (1992), and two companion volumes to Injury Time - Interplay: A Kind of Commonplace Book (1995) and Play Resumed: A Journal (1999). D. J. Enright received the Cholmondeley Award in 1974; he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1981 and appointed OBE in 1991. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1961, he was made Companion of Literature by the Society in 1998, an honour granted to no more than ten living writers at any one time. He died on the last day of 2002, after battling vigorously against cancer for seven years.
