Paul Theroux
Whenever I am idle I choose a Cary novel in the I way might seek a friend's company.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Comic novel by Joyce Cary, published in 1944. It was the third volume in a trilogy that included Herself Surprised (1941) and To Be a Pilgrim (1942). The book's protagonist, Gulley Jimson, is an iconoclastic artist consumed with the creative process who rejects the predictable and conventional in art. He does not hesitate to use people to achieve his ends...


From the Publisher
One of Cary's most memorable novels--the uproarious tale of Gulley Jimson, artist, genius, con man, and aging lover. From "one of the outstanding humorous writers of the century."--The Modern Age


About the Author
Joyce Cary (1888-1957) was born in Ireland and studied to be a painter before serving in the British military and civil service in West Africa. In 1920 he returned to England and devoted himself to writing.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of Cary's most memorable novels—the uproarious tale of Gulley Jimson, artist, genius, con man, and aging lover. From "one of the outstanding humorous writers of the century."--The Modern Age

SYNOPSIS

The Horse's Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? a has-been? or an exhausted, drunken ne'er-do-well? He is without doubt a visionary, and as he criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration the world as seen though his eyes is both an outrage and a place of terrible beauty. Each volume of Cary's trilogy, which begins with Herself Surprised and continues in To Be a Pilgrim, brings a single character to intense and memorable life and can be read entirely on its own. But when read together the three books, with their three strikingly different narrators, afford new and startling perspectives on each other. In the end, the trilogy offers a sweeping vision, at once funny and sad, sympathetic and satirical, of humanity in all its fallenness and freedom. It is the masterwork of a writer of dazzling insight and verbal resource, and one of the outstanding landmarks of twentieth-century fiction.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Whenever I am idle I choose a Cary novel in the I way might seek a friend's company.  — Paul Theroux