J. G. Farrell : The Making of a Writer

by Greacen, Lavinia

• ISBN13: 9780747551904
• ISBN10: 0747551901
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd

Summary

In 1979 in Ireland, J.G. Farrell drowned while fishing from the rocks near his home. He was 43, and it had only been 6 years since he had won the Booker Prize for his novelThe Siege of Krishnapur.A man who elevated privacy to a high art, Farrell's leagcy would be the "Empire Trilogy," now hailed as a classic of the 20th century, as well as a lingering mystery. Farrell had always been a man who baffled even those closest to him. Based on her access to J.G. Farrell's family and friends, as well as his notebooks and personal correspondence, Lavinia Greacen's biography disentangles not only the full circumstances of the novelist's death, but the story of his life and how it informed everything he wrote.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Foreword	xv
Prologue	1	(8)
Part One
At the Centre of a Vast Empire	9	(12)
The Vanished Comfort and Security of Earlier Days	21	(14)
Run Very Fast, Very Fast Indeed	35	(18)
The Yearning, the Boredom, the Heartache	53	(14)
A Ballistic Missile	67	(14)
In Human Affairs, Things Tend Inevitably to Go Wrong	81	(18)
The Beauty of the Cold Season	99	(20)
Water Becoming Hard Ice	119	(16)
This Is the Kind of Life I Want	135	(16)
The Slow, Dangerous Ascent	151	(20)
A Sea of Dark Feathers	171	(16)
A Nebulous Desire for Escape	187	(18)
The Extreme outer Edge of Endeavour	205	(22)
A Traveller through Unmapped Country	227	(18)
Part Two
Out two the Open Sea	245	(26)
A foot Wedged in the Door of Eternity	271	(24)
In the Right Place at the Right Time	295	(26)
At Large in the Minefields	321	(34)
A Tiny bit World-weary	355	(24)
A Place to Breathe	379	(16)
Epilogue	395	(6)
`The World of J.G.Farrell'	401	(2)
Derek Mahon
Notes and References	403	(18)
Index	421