The Horse's Mouth

The First Trilogy #3

by Joyce Cary

Joyce Cary wrote two trilogies, or triptychs as he later preferred to call them. The first comprises: Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth. The Horse's Mouth is a portrait of an artistic temperament. Its principal character, Gulley Jimson, is an impoverished painter who bothers little about the customary obligations and decencies. But although he is a bad citizen he is a good artist, so wholly preoccupied with his art that he is willing to endure any privation for its sake. Gulley Jimson, however is no self-conscious martyr. He is so wholly allergic to conventional values as to find a sardonic delight in flouting them, and the only morality he practises is the devotion he gives to painting.

'Mr Joyce Cary is an important and exciting writer; there's no doubt about that. To use Tennyson's phrase, he is a Lord of Language ... if you like rich writing full of gusto and accurate original character drawing, you will get it from The Horse's Mouth.' John Betjeman, Daily Herald.

The cover shows a detail from 'Desire' by Stanley Spencer, in the collection of Lady Watson.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Art, Literature, Novels, Humor, Irish Literature

375 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Cary now undertook his great works examining historical and social change in England during his own lifetime. The First Trilogy (1941–44) finally provided Cary with a reasonable income, and The Horse's Mouth (1944) remains his most popular novel. Cary's pamphlet "The Case for African Freedom" (1941), published by Orwell's Searchlight Books series, had attracted some interest, and the film director Thorold Dickinson asked for Cary's help in developing a wartime movie set partly in Africa. In 1943, while writing The Horse's Mouth, Cary travelled to Africa with a film crew to work on Men of Two Worlds.

Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned. The Moonlight (1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while.

Gertrude died as A Fearful Joy (1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.

He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation of Mister Johnson, and was offered a CBE, which he refused. Meanwhile he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (1952–55). In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed as bursitis, but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that of motor neuron disease, a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.

As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope in order to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak, and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work, The Captive and the Free (1959), first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on March 29, 1957.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words and colours… By means of those masterpieces are created…

I was walking by the Thames. Half-past morning on an autumn day. Sun in a mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop. All bright below. Low tide, dusty water and a crooked bar of straw, chicken-boxes, dirt and oil from mud to mud. Like a viper swimming in skim milk. The old serpent, symbol of nature and love.

Five windows light the caverned man; through one he breathes the air
Through one hears music of the spheres; through one can look
And see small portions of the eternal world.

The sheer beauty and the cloudy poetry of The Horse’s Mouth just leave one dumbstricken and turn the novel into one of the best books ever written about the artistes.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.

The hero is immersed in William Blake’s poetry and artistic imagery… He walks reciting “The Mental Traveller” – a mystical poem on the cyclic nature of existence – meanwhile his own existence keeps disintegrating…

Every man his own candle. He sees by his own flame, burning up his own guts. Oh to hell, I said, with the meaning. What I want is those green flames on a pink sky. Like copper on a dying fire.

Life of a truly revolutionary artist always seems to be a debacle… And only time will tell.

[Always Pouting · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gulley Jimson is a starving artist in the 1930s (maybe the 40s), who consistently borrows and steals money from those around him to help keep him fed and with art supplies. Not only does he seem to have trouble paying anyone back but he himself seems to find his actions reasonable at all times because they are in the name of art. With his constant lack of decorum and respect for other's feelings and property, Gulley manages to constantly get him self into situations of questionable legality, requiring his constant attempts to then flee said situation.

Ok so I requested this on netgalley apparently and also did not realize that it was a part of a series (wow shocker I know). To start off with this books really does stand on it's own and I didn't particularly feel lost while reading it in the way I usually do when I mistakenly pick up books from the middle of a series. That said though, I did sometimes have trouble following Gulley. My god he's just so British. The way he kept talking on and on it felt so strange and foreign and I'm not sure if it's because again the who British aspect of the writing or the fact that the book is somewhat dated. Also Gulley would just start going off on rants, which I guess is typical of old men, and the whole time I'm reading it I'm just like what why oh my god.

I know the book is supposed to be funny, and I actually did find it amusing, though I don't think I ever actually laughed out loud. This book was a 2.5 stars for me and would have been 1 if the writing hadn't been so witty. I do think the portrayal of Gulley is one that makes him seem charming and okay the whole episode where he shows up at the rich people's home while they're on vacation and sells all their things so that he can buy art supplies and then manages to only paint a pair of feet on their wall was hilarious. That was probably my favorite part, especially when they still want to buy art from him at the end. Also his constant instant that the boy, he keeps calling him Nosy so I can't remember if we ever actually learn his name, who wants to learn from him shouldn't waste his time on art because of how worthless it is. It was just amusing to have Gulley's running commentary on art, and I did get a new perspective on things from it.

Regardless of that though, the plot was hard to follow somewhat and it just kept jumping from one episode to the next with Gulley. Like the 6 month time he spends in jail just kind of disappears. Also I just kind of felt uncomfortable with his treatment of women, especially Sara. I know I'm supposed to laugh and I also know it's an older book written when norms were different but I can't help that I also am reading this in another time period with different norms, and as a women I just couldn't be like ha ha remember when he hit Sara in the face and broke her nose. Or ha ha remember when he pushes her down the stairs and basically kills her, just to sell a sketch she kept of herself, to buy more art supplies.

I just feel like a lot of humor in the older literature that I've read is like ha ha look at the hijinx of this crazy man and I do try to take it lightly but the whole time I'm like wow that was so awful. I think it's just a divide caused by difference in culture. Anyway this one was a hard one to get through, because even though it was witty and amusing at times, the plot was just Gulley ranting and treating everyone badly. And at the end everyone just kind of died including him. I wish there had been more coherence to the story line than lets follow Gulley until he drops dead.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another of the Greatest TREASURES of my library, and I don't hesitate to give it my 4.5 Stars! The half point is, of course, deducted for its lack of popular appeal - in that it is rabidly misogynistic and in fact utterly but comically misanthropic, elitist, and a tad too aspishly arcane for most.

I loved it.

Mainly because like its struggling artist hero I am bipolar.

Oh, well, bipolar in a medicinally contained way, so that I rarely give much trouble to most of my fellows, like Thelonius Monk rarely did. HE contained his craziness in the sublimation of self-contained jazz.

The only target for my still actively bipolar waspishness is unwarily disjointed writers. But Cary is very flexibly jointed author: in fact he is a twentieth century giant!

His artist, Gulley Jimson, is above all great artists except William Blake. Hooray! Another Bipolar with an attitude, only Jimson has attitude with a capital A, being way too far gone to care.

He distrusts everyone he knows. His only real friend is Whiskey, whenever he can afford it - which is practically never. But when he flies he flies. No stranger to the Hoosegow for drunkenness and disorderliness, he feels safe from his creditors behind the bars of a dank cell.

But he even despises the kids who idolize him and want to be artists too!

***

Have you seen the super Alec Guineas film of this novel? (It's free on Youtube!) Dad took us kids to a Drive In Theatre in the early sixties to see it, and to get us out of Mom's hair.

We loved it, and I especially as I loved to doodle and draw caricatures. On reading the book, however, I wonder if polished Guiness managed to act acerbically and menacingly enough in the part of vitriolic old Jimson.

I doubt it.

At least not enough for Cary in all liklihood.

***

Gulley Jimson is - like me - a square peg in a round hole. I think that's part of Cary's message here: it's Okay to be Square and not fit in to modern society.

Many of us square pegs read books just like this! Our life doesn't fit in the world's expectations. We don't mind.

For William Blake, too, the words felicity and salubrity are not of this world.

And Cary would agree.

Only the Visions of Paradise we're granted in our reading can bring us that gift!

***

And NOW, for your viewing pleasure, here's the Complete film, with Alec Guiness:

https://youtu.be/3sQM2FXuIPU?si=y1kHt...

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Description: 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 appears with a newly outrageous and terrible beauty.

Opening:I was walking by the Thames.

After thumping down to earth with the second in the triptych, namely To Be A Pilgrim, I was put off Cary for a long while. Now I'm back and relishing the thought that this, The Horse's Mouth, is the best of them all. Gully Jimson's father was tentatively based on abstract artist Gerald Wilde. There is a Shepperton Studio film of this book starring Alec Guinness, unfortunately the full film is not available on youtube.

If you want to get that scholarship and go to Oxford and get into the Civil Service and be a great man and have two thousand pounds a year and a nice clean wife with hot and cold and a kid with real eyes that open and close and a garage for two cars and a savings book, you'll have to work your dinner time.

Well, I thought, here's another of the Jill's in the box. But no woman really gets old inside until she's dead or takes to bridge. Scratch the grandmother and you find the grandbaby giggling behind the nursery door at nothing at all. Nothing a man would understand.



4* Herself Surprised
2* To Be A Pilgrim
4* The Horse's Mouth

4* Mister Johnson

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read The Horse's Mouth about four times since I discovered it through the film adaptation written by and staring the incomparable Alec Guinness. I'm still baffled how a book can be so hillarious even while referencing William Blake and Spinoza all over the place. I don't know how a writer goes about creating the kinds of majestic sentences and authentic characters and vivid images that fill this book. I've read a bunch of other works by Joyce Cary and had extremely varied reactions to them. I'm so impressed by the amount of thought he puts into his characters even when I don't enjoy spending a lot of time around them, but I would love to be able to hang out with the painter and rogue Gulley Jimson or the man who was able to create him. I guess Jimson would probably tell me "Tie lead weights to your feet, fireworks in your hair, kiss your mother goodbye and jump in the river," but I feel like I wouldn't be able to help myself. I'd hang on every word he said and bask in the light of his genius. Jimson's paintings, though of course one never gets to see them, are as compelling and arresting as almost any real piece of art. It's the passion and the complexity that Joyce Cary puts into Jimson's thoughts about art that gives this book its sharpness. It's amazing that he achieves such a level of vivid depiction and that Jimson is such a bold and inovative character, especially when even Cary's essay Art and Reality: Ways of the Creative Process is a little on the conservative side. I feel like he must have gotten completely absorbed in Gulley Jimson himself and started to feel Jimson's paintings inside of him, almost as if in writing this book he was breaking down walls and flinging open the doors of perception to a degree that he never achieved with his own paintings. The writing feels more expansive than anything else he did. It feels like a joyful soul in print. At the same time, though, the book is perfectly precise. There isn't a word out of place, the story never escapes itself, everything seems like it has to have been thought through a hundred times because it fits together like an easy jigsaw puzzle. So I ask myself over and over again when I read The Horse's Mouth how such precision can coexist with such dynamism, and all I can come up with is that Joyce Cary deserves the name of genius. If this book was a painting or a piece of music, something that more people could experience more instantaneously, I think it would be a lot better known. I consider myself extremely lucky to have found it.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth is the Portrait of the Artist as a middle-aged man. A real artist, not a writer. The afterword notes this a “comic novel, but Gulley is often near despair”(Wright, 351). Joyce Cary “impersonates” the artist, rather as Faulkner does the psychopathic “I” in the third of his trilogy, The Mansion. (For most of the novel, Mink Snopes is in prison for murder, dreaming of getting out and killing—and by the end of the novel, you’re with him.) Joyce Cary’s Gulley Jimson is far from a killer, though he threatens murder over the phone, and he flirts with prison, from which the narrator writes in the first novel of this trilogy, Sarah Monday in Herself Surprised. She’s in prison for various thefts done to help Gulley and his son live.
In a nod to actual English culture, the artist is son of an artist. Jimson’s father is “a real artist,” with his paintings in the Royal Academy, but they are displaced by the new style, the Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt. So his dad dies penniless.

Not sure about insights into artists themselves; in fact, it may be better as an historical novel pre-WWII. Take this exchange,
“I respect artists,” said Plantie, “they give their lives to it.”
“And other peoples’ lives,” I said, “like Hitler.”
….”but do the Germans want a war?” “Don’t know what they want until they get
it, “ said Mr Mosely, “and then they want the other thing.”….
But I was thinking of artist Hitler. (74)

Jimson thinks of Hitler by quoting inexplicable Blake’s “Mental Traveller,”
But when they find the frowning babe
Terror strikes through the region wide;
They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’
And none can touch that frowning form,
Except it be a woman old;
She nails him down upon the rock,
And all is done as I have told.

Also historical (and a bit hysterical) are social roles, like the critic Professor Alabaster whom Gulley shows how to pawn his winter overcoat to buy beer and bacon for the two of them.(221) When Sir Reginald picks the Professor up in his Rolls, he is delayed packing a cardboard box with socks, toothbrush and notes on the Works of Gulley Jimson. How teaching has changed, with professors themselves driving luxury cars.

May I observe that Cary writes many superb nuggets, comparisons like a single man to a fire:
“But he’s a bachelor. Driven in on himself. Banked down and still burning,
the fire in the hearth.”(77)
Or consider Rozzie, “full of good nature and resignation. Yes, that was the attraction of the poor old barge; her despair.”(299)
If we recall Wright’s afterward about Gulley himself, Rosina / Rozzie is a mirror reflection, sometimes turning despair to laughter.
Partly because I haven’t read it for forty years, partly because I never did sort out the plot, I think spoilers almost impossible for this novel. Ironies near the end, "Most of the roof at that end had also disappeared. Which greatly improved the light." The Council is tearing down his place. When the dust cleared, "ten thousand angels in caps, helmets and bowlers, sitting on dustbins, and other peoples' cabbages, laughing. That's funny, I thought, they've all seen the same joke. Then I perceived that they were laughing at me. And I should have got up and bowed if my swing had been steady enough..." Thus begins his mortal stroke.
His friend Nosy, "It's not fair, they're all against you." Gulley, "getting up a grievance is about the worst mistake anyone can make, especially if he has one. You'll feel sorry for yourself...Get a job, get that grocery..."
But feeling sorry for himself, never a real job, seems to work for the US Trumpster. He's like the Angel on the Dumpster, never an honest day's work.

The novel arrives more or less where it starts, all of a piece. “You can’t leave brushes and paint where kids can get them. They all love art. Born to it.” (9)

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Barmy brushman makes
stumblebummery an art
while narking women

[Roger Pettit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I meet two friends every six weeks or so to discuss a particular book that the three of us have agreed to read. One of the many pleasures of such an arrangement is that you are sometimes encouraged by one of the other members of the group to tackle a novel that might otherwise have passed you by. I had never heard of Irish writer Joyce Cary or of his novel 'The Horse's Mouth' before it was suggested as potential reading material by one of my book group friends. I am so glad that my friend nominated it. It's a brilliant novel, one of the very best I have read in a long time. 'The Horse's Mouth' also demonstrates the folly of giving up on a book prematurely. I did think about abandoning it after having read the first 40 or so pages. At that stage, I simply could not get into it. I was finding the language, the ideas and the characters difficult to follow and to warm to. I am so pleased that I stuck with it though. 'The Horse's Mouth' yields its pleasures slowly. It's a very rewarding read.

Set in London in 1938 (on the banks of the Thames, in an area known as Greenbank), 'The Horse's Mouth' features Gulley Jimson. (What a wonderful name!) Jimson is a 67-year old painter. As the story opens, he has just been released from prison and is making his way back to his artist's studio in Greenbank. Jimson is essentially a lovable Bohemian scoundrel. He lives a hand to mouth existence, constantly borrowing money and getting into debt in order to try to fund the one thing that matters most to him: painting. His materials are frequently stolen or ruined by the rain that seeps into his ramshackle studio. He drinks a lot. And Jimson is irascibly impatient with the youngsters, most notably one named Nosy, who approach him for advice on how to paint and how to pursue a career as an artist. His personal relationships seem to have all ended in failure. Jimson has a penchant for the work of the English poet and painter William Blake, and frequently quotes passages from the latter's poetry. (In that respect, and in many others, Jimson reminds me more than a little of John Mortimer's character Horace Rumpole. I wonder if Mortimer based his independently-minded barrister to some extent on Cary's creation?) Jimson is trying to finish 'The Fall', a painting which depicts the Biblical account of Adam and Eve and which he hopes will enhance his somewhat tattered reputation.

On reaching Greenbank, Jimson comes under the influence of Coker, the barmaid at his local pub 'The Eagle'. Keen to recover the money (almost £5) that he owes her, Coker persuades Jimson to visit Sara Monday. Sara is one of Jimson's ex-lovers. She posed as a model for him in the past and is in possession of a few of Jimson's early paintings of her. At one time, she had several more of Jimson's paintings, which she kept when their relationship broke down. But she later sold them to a man called Hickson, who is a wealthy art collector. Coker persuades Sara to sign a statement to the effect that the paintings were not hers to sell in the hope that this will provide Jimson with evidence that will help him to get them back from Hickson. A rapprochement takes place between Sara and Jimson when he responds positively to her attempt to revive their relationship. Things move on from there in a story that is a powerful mixture of humour, tragedy and pathos.

'The Horse's Mouth' is not always an easy read and is initially very difficult to get to grips with. But, as I have mentioned, it's well worth persevering with. It's a quite brilliant portrayal of the artistic temperament, of the attitudes of the art establishment of the time and of what it must be like to be someone who is single-mindedly dedicated to painting, whatever the personal and financial cost. It's suffused with wit, intelligence and humour. The dialogue and the characterisation are excellent. Indeed, Gulley Jimson, a fascinating and complex person, is surely one of the great characters of 20th century English literature. I am frankly astonished that 'The Horse's Mouth', an offbeat novel of depth that is brimful of thought-provoking ideas and attitudes and which boasts a very sympathetic central character, is not better known. Although it's the third book of a trilogy, it can be read in isolation without any knowledge of the two earlier stories. It may well be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. I think it's certainly a minor masterpiece. Do read it. 10/10.

[Lemar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The flow of descriptive language on display here is overwhelming. The main character of the novel is an artist, and as if that weren't bad enough, a modern artist, as he, Gully Jimson, might say. The prose describing the art and more importantly the thought behind the art is staggeringly beautiful. Yes I was mentally staggering around my living room as I read passages like this one on a sunset,

"Under the cloudbank. Sun was in the bank. Streak of salmon below. Salmon trout
above soaking into wash blue. River whirling along so fast that its skin was pulled
into wrinkles like silk dragged over the floor. Shot silk. Fresh breeze of the
eyeot. Sharp as spring frost. Ruffling under the silk-like muscles in a nervous horse".

After just reading a passable thriller in which the author used the phrase "black as an ink blot" twice to describe water at night this language was as welcome as dinner.

The Horse's Mouth was made into a terrific movie starring Alec Guinness in 1958. Joyce Cary has a unique voice that celebrates art and the part of man that shrugs off the mundane and revels in the glory of life. He is from an Irish family and I heard echoes of At Swim-Two-Birds which I loved as well.

I often, most probably too often, give 5 stars for books that I feel totally fulfilled their mission. This one soared above in that timeless realm of books that affirm life, with no charge for extra baggage.

[Kerfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The painter Gulley Jimson is a soundrel, and no mistake. He would not be judged either a good man or a success, yet he has a talent and an appetite for living.

Joyce Cary's trilogy was good, better, and this, the third book, best for me. At the same time, all three now beg to be read again--the different points of view (Sara, then Tom, then Gulley), filled in by each character's separate inclinations, prejudices and intentions, would illuminate especially Sara's story, Herself Surprised.

None of the three would pass muster with the moralists of the world. And yet all have an endearing ablility to acknowledge their faults, take their knocks, and move on. They do not wallow in pity.

Gulley, especially, has an oversized ability to seize the moment and make the most of it.

"For it saves a lot of time between friends to swear that life is good, brother. It leaves more time to live."

A cynical, William Blake-quoting, opportunistic optimist, he knows art is "self-indulgence". And yet he must.

One of the book's genuine pleasures is Gulley's continuous descriptive interior monologue about the colors and forms he sees around him, always inspiration for a new work of art, or an addition or alteration to a work-in-progress. For Gulley Jimson, no matter his situation, good or bad, the world is always fresh, surprising, new, and alive.

And he is always ready, and eager, to do it again.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

Gulley Jimson was quite a character but on the whole I felt that the humor in this book was more of the sort which made me smile inwardly than the sort which make me laugh aloud. Jimson indubitably was an artist but one who had gone off the rails sometime in his past. I loved the way that he was always describing the sky and clouds in terms of colors & shapes. What I found more melancholy was the fact that it seemed to me it was clear to him that his best work was behind him but he couldn't admit that to himself. Perhaps the funniest thing was how he would suggest to someone that he do some painting for them & despite the fact that this proposal was turned down, in his mind he would not only decide it was agreed to but come up with a price for it & in short order, would believe that the person owed him that money!

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gulley Jimson is one of the great literary creations, and as many times as I've read this novel, Gulley still appears as unique and unpredictable as he did the first time I read it. Joyce Cary's novels aren't as popular as they once were, but his First Trilogy remains a timeless masterpiece. I read the series backwards, it seems, for this is the third (and my favorite) novel. It's one of the finest descriptions of an artist and the artistic process ever written, in my opinion.

Oh, and as an aside, it was my introduction to William Blake.

[Sarah B · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this was one of those books I picked up to read on a whim. I have to admit the word "horse" in the title was the thing that caught my eye but I also knew it was highly unlikely to actually be about a horse. The novel does use the word "donkey" a few times but it's not about animals at all. Instead it's about a broke homeless artist who has some very bad habits. And to my utter shock I actually found this old book funny! I was actually laughing at the crazy antics in here, multiple times. Yes, I was actually laughing out loud!! And that is something I very rarely do.

This is a crazy story. The plot is very random but it works well for this book. Some may call it a "crack fiction" as the main character does insane stuff. And it's the outrageous stuff he has the nerve to actually do that makes it so funny. It's shocking what he does. It makes you think "how can he DO that stuff?!!" but he does it anyway.

So the main character is a 67-year-old man named Gulley Jimson. And he lives in England. At the beginning of the book he just got out of jail. And he is an artist. The main plot makes it very clear how he thinks. Everything he sees around him he wants to draw it to paint. He names colors or he thinks about lines with how they curve or how light hits a thing. The art stuff in vivid descriptions is throughout the entire book.

But Gulley is very naughty. Think of that boy from Home Alone. Gulley is just like that. Except he is old. But he doesn't act old. He doesn't really act like a grown man very much - except when he is spouting some random bits of philosophy or giving some very good advice to a younger man about career choices. But mainly he acts spur of the moment and makes bad decisions. But the story is about Gulley and the various people he meets. I am sure many of them regret meeting him.

Gulley's main problem is two fold: he is addicted to making art and he has no money.. the two are a bad combination. As you need money to get art supplies. Plus he needs to eat and drink and sleep somewhere. And all of these things create a very entertaining story.

I never was bored reading this. The story just kept moving and I had no idea how it would end. Lots of great details in here. The environment really comes to life.

The book was originally written in 1944 and it's set at the beginning of WW2.

I believe the title of the book refers to the fact that during the story Gulley is telling the younger character, Nosy, what it is like to be an artist. So Nosy is learning from a real artist what the life of an actual artist is. And he hopes that Nosy will make the proper choice. Because Gulley wants Nosy to have a good life. And while Gulley does naughty things he is not a bad person. He does have his weaknesses including believing in himself (which he doesn't).

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was required reading for my Modern English Literature class at U of T way back in the day.
The story is told from the point of view of Gulley Jimson, who has just been released from prison. He was totally amoral and was up to pulling any type of swindle or con in order to get his hands on some money. This rather unlikable character's only redeeming quality was that he was totally focused on painting, and so he said and did whatever he had to to get money for supplies, etc. I kept gasping: what a selfish, bad man he is! He is defacing and destroying other people's homes!!!

Jimson commented, often jeeringly, on the world around him. His discussions of the art world and other artists were what grabbed my interest. His descriptions of famous artist's techniques and inspirations were fascinating. He also held forth on the artists of his day, some successful but with no real talent, some talented but too self-critical, some - like his father - with a fair amount of talent but who were not following the "current fad or trends" so their work wasn't selling, etc. There was one tortured artist whose tale I will never forget. This young artist was so demanding and self critical, that at one point he destroyed every one of his canvases and only cut out and and kept one small patch out of all of his canvasses: it was a section of his painting of the eye (or mouth?) of a horse. It was the only piece that met with his exacting standards. Madness!

This novel paints a very grim picture of an artist's life - that is, if you happened to be at the bottom along with the thousands of other artists clambering to get up the steep and rickety ladder of success in the fickle art world. I actually felt very "dusty" as I was reading this book, as if everything was coated in a thick coat of the grime you find on the outside of your windows.

I can't say that I loved this book. The writing was, of course, excellent, but it took the heart out of me and I decided to follow a more secure career path. I also remember reading at the time a quote from either Eudora Welty or some other great southern writer that it was unfortunate that TOO many people were being allowed to write and publish books these days. (I took that to mean that quite a few people can write well, but not all of these people should have had their work published.) I heard her! I'm rating this life altering book a 3.5 out of 5.
N.B. While looking for a graphic to add to my review, I discovered that there was a movie adaptation of this book, starring Alec Guinness. I've never seen it, and don't think I will bother to watch it. One ride on that wacky merry-go-round was enough!

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

,,Ka zinai, gal kiekvienas paukstis, kurs nardo ore, yra didelis dziaugsmo pasaulis, atskirtas tavo penketo pojuciu?".....ir dar....,,Zmogus jauciasi daug laisvesnis, kai jis nieko nesitiki. Ir tik tada jis sugeba gyventi nesirsdamas."

[مروان البلوشي · Rating 5 out of 5]

تاريخ القراءة الأصلي : ٢٠١١
رواية عظيمة.. تتحدث عني وعنك أيها القارئ النخلص

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it might be too broad a generalization to declare a stylistic similarity amongst many mid-20th century Irish writers, Joyce Cary has a bit of Joyce and quite a bit more of Flann O'Brien.
The Horse's Mouth is actually the third of a trilogy, though not having read the prior two parts was not remotely a problem. It is set in London in the late 1930s, where a 67-year-old painter who has had his share of success at various junctures in his career is now completely down and out and fresh out of a brief prison stay, only one of many as it turns out, owing to a succession of small frauds, outbursts of pub violence, attempts to extort money out of his former patrons and the like.
The book is very funny and alternates between the terse street dialog of the small-time con artist and his milieu, and his William Blake-inspired way of perceiving the world. Every scene is interrupted as a mackerel sky completely distracts him from whatever is happening. The prose is terse and precise; his inner monologue would be a more conventional stream of consciousness if there were ellipses between each phrase, but instead Cary uses a succession of incomplete sentences with full stops, which small a typographical difference as that may seem, gives a very distinctive rhythm to the prose.

[Robert Wechsler]

I found this novel both brilliant and boring. The brilliance appears in flashes throughout. The narrator is an original character, low and high all at once, completely incorrigible, much like Roth's Mickey Sabbath (or vice versa). Cary also uses language marvelously. I don't know if it's a matter of Cary's style being copied so much, but after a while the prose, the observations, the personality come to seem more relentless than brilliant. And more pretentious, as well. I wanted a respite from the wild lyricism and the pitiful relationships and characters that surround Gulley Jimson.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book: it was a window into the mind of a modern artist and (along with The Shock of the New it changed the way I looked at and understood modern art forever.
It's too long since I read it to write a proper review, I should read it again!

[Dick Heimbold · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an artist/author I am very interested in books about artists’ acts of creation. There are a lot of books written by lovers of art who describe the act of painting, but don’t capture what is going on in the artist’s heart and soul during the act of painting. Joyce Cary captured it in The Horse’s Mouth—and captured it as well as in any other book that I know of.

I believe he was able to do this because he was an artist who tried to make a go of it in Paris in his early years. Realizing he didn’t have the talent to rise to the top, he turned to writing—but I believe he never lost the artist’s magic way of seeing things. For example, his descriptions of the London sky and the Thames I found to be exquisite and beautifully written.

William Blake’s poetry showed up for a verse or two in many places throughout the book. Blake too was artist and writer. Blake’s oeuvre was vast and he rebelled against establishment constraints of his time. Gulley Jimson, the protagonist of The Horse’s Mouth, had a more earthy vision than characters in Blake’s universe—but the drive to crack out of the egg of convention and institutionalized thinking blazed bright—even during the last years of Jimson’s life that are portrayed in the story.

Jimson operated in a world close to society’s lowest rung. He committed felonies, petty thefts and a lot of mischief. Playing by the rules wasn’t a big deal to him. He was not averse to ripping off friends or past wives and lovers. Nevertheless many of them were there for him when he was in need—regardless of his prior transgressions against them—as if his special gift as artist made the overhead burden of his friendship worth it.

Throughout The Horse’s Mouth he often observed the world around him and imagined how it would look on canvas. This artist view of things remained vivid throughout the calamitous later years of his life that the book covers and kept his enjoyment of life on an upward trajectory right to the end.

Cary used a dense writing style salted with London slang of the 1940s. Dialogue sentences are run together in long paragraphs. Verses from William Blake’s obscure poetry are interspersed throughout the book. But don’t let this put you off from reading The Horse’s Mouth. It is very, very funny. It’s crafted in a captivating writing style where every word works and no extra ones are thrown in as grace notes. The story carries the reader along without dull or boring passages. As I progressed through the book I realized I was immersed in a celebration of that esthetic energy that propels the artist soul to break out of the boundaries of ordinary life and give birth to the new and the unique. I felt good when I put it down.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 2 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

The story of the last days of the artist Gully Jimson is by turns comedic and long-winded, sometimes pell-mell, and sometimes a bit shocking, at least by today's standards. Long sections held me pretty well entranced, while the beginning took a while for me to get into, and the ending seemed to last and last and last.

The Horse's Mouth appears on the Guardian's list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and it has also been re-issued under the NYRB imprint, so obviously it hasn't been forgotten, but I hadn't heard of Cary or this novel--possibly his most well-known--before picking up an old paperback at some library sale on the strength of Harper & Row's Perennial Library imprint from the 60s, and the fact that it was probably selling for fifty cents. I pick up too many of these 'why-not' purchases (why not? it's only fifty cents), to the extent that I'm drowning in them now, but this one was worthwhile, I think. I don't know that I've ever encountered a character quite like Jimson in my reading--eccentric is putting it mildly.

But Jimson's ruminations on the world as he finds it is worth at least fifty cents...and it doesn't begin and end with the London of 1939 either. If you're cynical, you'll find his ideas on art, art patrons, government and women (among countless other subjects) have a certain appeal even still--if you're an optimist, you might be better off giving the whole thing a pass. That isn't to imply that the book (or Gully Jimson) is a downer--just the opposite, actually. Few characters I know of possess such reckless and manic joie de vive as he does, and accepts every rotten thing just as it is. Imagine an aging Dean Moriarty who is obsessed with painting and you'll have the idea.

I think there's a good chance some of the effect of the book has rubbed off over the years--in the mid-40s, when it was first published, I can imagine the book being a riotous finger right in the eye of a...well, in a lot of eyes, but mostly in small-minded, straightjacketed society that finds it difficult to accept modern art, but also points that same finger back at the unreasonableness of what modern art sometimes asks of society. By his extreme behavior, Gully Jimson shows that there's a lot of ridiculousness on both sides.

My view is that if you can find a copy out there for fifty cents, you should pick it up. Why not?

[Bet · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a romp this book is! I'm sure it's not to everyone's taste, but I had to give it five stars. It made me laugh; it sometimes annoyed and sometimes bored me, but it got under my skin. As a painter I was with the old scoundrel, the ageing artist Gully Jimson, all the way. All the world was a painting to him and I know what it is like to lose the thread of a conversation because I'm thinking of what color I would use or how I would paint the person or the sky or the scene I'm looking at. He was a crook and a liar and just generally a lowlife, but I couldn't help caring about him. The tone of the writing is a bit cynical and world-weary and philosophical at the same time. Cary created an unforgettable character in Gully Jimson, a bit like John Kennedy Toole did with Ignatius in "A Confederacy of Dunces".

If I were more literary, I would comment on the use of Blake's poetry and also the writing style, but I'll have to leave that to someone else.

[Ensiform · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third part of a trilogy I remain ignorant of. It’s the story of Gulley Jimson, an artist whose first drawings — of his wife at her bath — are valuable masterworks, but who now at sixty-seven lives in poverty creating vast, fantastic Biblical visions on walls. He narrates the story, and his prose is steeped in realistically evoked artistic vision as he catches sight of ideas in nature and throws himself almost involuntarily into his work. The conversation is realistic: staccato and slang-packed. There are some rich moments of dark comedy here, but on the whole, as a slice of life novel it grows rather boring over 370 pages: Jimson paints with an obsessive vigor. Jimson avoids creditors. Jimson steals money. Jimson interacts with and ruminates endlessly about the women in his life. Although skillfully written, this would have made a much better, slicker short novel.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing (hence 5 Stars) tour de force telling the story of the latter stages of the life/career of artist (painter) Gulley Jimson - one of the greatest individual literary creations I've ever come across :oO
He is a "proper" artist - seeing everything in terms of his artistic temperament; obsessed; material matters such as money for food/clothes/lodgings etc being of minor importance/inconvenience; personal relationships similarly take a back-seat. Consequently his life is a continuous switch-back rollercoaster - both hilarious and tragic at the same time. Jimson's internal narrative is rendered with a unique style, and you genuinely feel like you have been transported into the mind of another human being. Masterpiece.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have this cover, that used to express the book for me. I used to thrust this cover at my friends: That is beauty. That is love. Find them inside, too. It's about a down-and-out artist, in his delapidated age. Humane.

[E.]

This is Tom Robbin's favorite book. Thought it worth reading for that alone. I had to order an old copy from somewhere in the midwest cause I couldn't find it around here. We'll see.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read this but I ought to reread it since ALL that I remember is I liked it a lot. Why I do not remember. I remember it being humorous.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent inventiveness, language, and characterization. Can't recall reading anything quite like this for style. Gulley Jimson is a slave to imagination. He has a moral streak and some feeling for others, but those qualities are often overwhelmed by his disrespect for civil behaviour and his penchant for surviving by means of lying and theft. He is not admirable, but he is often sympathetic and always riveting. His friends also absorb attention and tend to be more likable than he is. The least likable characters are municipal functionaries and low-lifes with a penchant for violence. A handful of millionaires cultivated by Jimson as real or potential patrons are surprisingly also likable (and in the Beeders' case badly treated by Jimson). Their relationship seems mutually necessary: the millionaires sometimes give Jimson the artist the physical means of survival; his imagination gives them spiritual sustenance, saving them from lives without meaning.
There are minor imperfections. The first conversation between Jimson and Prof. Alabaster feels artificial. There's a brief sag into repetitiveness about two-thirds of the way through. Some readers may find it difficult to follow long paragraphs containing conversations between two characters with only the quotation marks indicating who is speaking. But any weak spot is quickly turned around by Cary's writing and by Jimson's compulsive interpretation of much of what he sees as a potential painting. The movie with Alec Guinness is a classic, too, and just enough different in its plot line to make the novel distinct and worth reading on its own.

[Heather Boundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modern classic, the story of Gulley Jimson - an impoverished painter, who thinks nothing of skiving off friends and enemies alike, is full of humor and pathos. Gulley is so preoccupied with his art that he has no realization of the effects of his actions on others, and if he does get a glimpse can easily talk himself out of it. You have to feel sorry for the boy, Nosey, who aspires to be an artist too and is taken in by Gulleys escapades; but even more you feel for the women in his life. His muse, Sara, to whom he was once unmarried, and who though the love of his life was treated so badly that he possibly caused her death (would we call it murder these days?); and Roxie another young women led astray be Gulley and who died a premature death. Such treatment of women may have had some humor 70 years ago, but seems unacceptable now. While there were lots of little chuckles when reading the book, and an appreciation of Cary's use of language, the story does seem a little dated.

[Mandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This 1944 novel, the third in a trilogy (although it works as a stand-alone) follows the adventures of impecunious artist Gulley Jimson who exploits everyone he meets and is one of fiction’s most obnoxious characters. Recently released from prison (personally I’d have thrown away the key) he preys on his acquaintances and reflects, in long rambling tirades, on art, the creative process, love, society and life in general – all to no purpose. It’s supposed to be a comic novel, but where the comedy was I failed to discover. I have a horrible suspicion the book might be based on some equally insalubrious real-life London artists of the era, which doesn’t make Jimson any more empathetic. Tedious.