Thank you, Tesco's

Back in July, I came across a near-free copy of reference 2 on the second book table of the large and handsome Tesco's, south of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, an event noticed at the end of reference 1.

It has turned out to be an entertaining work of fiction, funny and tragic at the same time - a book which makes Durrell's 'The Alexandrian Quartet', read by me what turns out to be just about a decade ago and noticed at reference 4, seem very up itself. Enright's Švejk to Durrell's something much more ambitious, not to say pretentious. But quite a lot of street violence in both.

Enright was, I read in the preface, a scholarship boy from the Midlands who sat at the feet of F. R. Leavis and even published the odd piece in Scrutiny. Such publication was, it seems, something of a bar to academic employment in this country at that time, so Enright wound up teaching English Literature in Alexandria, not long after the end of the second world war. Maybe his students there did not learn too much about Paradise Lost, but we here get this fine spin-off.

Hopefully I am about to become the proud owner of the longer memoir of reference 3, bought this afternoon from Abebooks - which at £3.50 or so, was only three times what I had to pay Tesco's. There do seem to be quite a lot of people out there looking for homes for their treasures - and who will part with them for postage and packing.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/wine-shipper.html.

Reference 2: Academic Year - D. J. Enright - 1955.

Reference 3: Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor - Enright, D.J. - 1969.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=durrell. I still have it, but will I ever read Durrell again?