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The Greater Infortune
Very Good/No Jacket. First Edition Hardcover. Date inside both boards. No other marks or inscriptions. No creasing to covers or to spine. A very clean very tight copy with bright unmarked boards, minor traces of foxing and no bumping to corners. 194pp. A revised version of the author's earlier work Saturnine about the life of Leckie, an interesting misfit. Scarce first edition. ISBN B000OK7TT6
191 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1960
8 people want to read
About the author
Rayner Heppenstall
55 books5 followersJohn Rayner Heppenstall was an English novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.
Heppenstall's first novel The Blaze of Noon, was neglected at the time. Much later, in 1967, it received an Arts Council award. He was Francophile in literary terms, and his non-fiction writing reflects his tastes.
Critical attention has linked him to the French nouveau roman, in fact as an anticipator, or as a writer of the "anti-novel". Several critics (including, according to his diaries, Helene Cixous) have named Heppenstall in this connection. He is sometimes therefore grouped with Alain Robbe-Grillet, or associated with other British experimentalists: Anthony Burgess, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Stefan Themerson and Eva Figes. The Connecting Door (1962) is singled out as influenced by the nouveau roman.
He was certainly influenced by Raymond Roussel, whose Impressions of Africa he translated. Later novels include The Shearers, Two Moons and The Pier. He also wrote a short study of the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy.
Heppenstall's first novel The Blaze of Noon, was neglected at the time. Much later, in 1967, it received an Arts Council award. He was Francophile in literary terms, and his non-fiction writing reflects his tastes.
Critical attention has linked him to the French nouveau roman, in fact as an anticipator, or as a writer of the "anti-novel". Several critics (including, according to his diaries, Helene Cixous) have named Heppenstall in this connection. He is sometimes therefore grouped with Alain Robbe-Grillet, or associated with other British experimentalists: Anthony Burgess, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Stefan Themerson and Eva Figes. The Connecting Door (1962) is singled out as influenced by the nouveau roman.
He was certainly influenced by Raymond Roussel, whose Impressions of Africa he translated. Later novels include The Shearers, Two Moons and The Pier. He also wrote a short study of the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy.
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April 14, 2015
Published first as Saturnine in 1943, Heppenstall revised the novel in 1960. The novel is a sequence of surreal fantasies told from the p-o-v of Leckie, poised for conscription and revelling in his imaginings, blurring the line between the real and unreal, moving from scene to scene in pursuit of his perfect woman ‘Thea’. The novel has a cool ironic tone, a wry detachment, enough for John Davenport to comment: “The deeply ironical tone and the striking precision of the writing combine to create a work of art.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review