Imago Bird - Softcover

Mosley, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749399082 ISBN 13: 9780749399085

Publisher: Minerva, 1997

Synopsis

“Ever since I can remember I have thought the grown-up world to be mad; its way of talking to itself and being outraged at the answers; the bright look in its eye as it goes off to feed on disaster. Aristotle said it was self-evident that human beings wanted happiness; but it seems to me they are more at home in sadness and confusion; that if these are taken away they are exposed to the heat of the sun like snails without shells or dark places.” This vivid and strikingly witty novel examines the contradictions between the public face and the private experience. Nephew to the prime minister of England, eighteen-year-old Bert tries to make sense of the grown-up world around him, a colorful crowd of television personalities, politicians, young Trotskyites, pop stars, and eccentric relatives. With the help of his laconic psychoanalyst, Bert questions the relation between exterior and interior reality, while Mosley himself questions art’s ability to convey these different realities. Both Bert and Mosley triumph over these challenges by the end of this engaging and innovative novel.

About this title

About the Author

Born in London, Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in Italy during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross for bravery. He succeeded as 3rd Baron Ravensdale in 1966 and, on the death of his father on 3 December 1980, he also succeeded to the Baronetcy. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Sir Oswald was arrested in 1940 for his antiwar campaigning, and spent the majority of World War II in prison. As an adult, Nicholas was a harsh critic of his father in "Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980" (1983), calling into question his father's motives and understanding of politics. Nicholas' work contributed to the 1998 Channel 4 television programme titled 'Mosley' based on his father's life. At the end of the mini-series, Nicholas is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley began to stammer as a young boy, and attended weekly sessions with speech therapist Lionel Logue in order to help him overcome the speech disorder. Mosley says his father claimed never really to have noticed his stammer, but feels Sir Oswald may have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people as a result.

From Publishers Weekly

Bert, the precocious 18-year-old narrator of this inventive, wickedly amusing coming-of-age novel, comforts his alcoholic Aunt Mavis (an eccentric who drinks in the nude), makes love to his Trotskyite girlfriend in the afternoons and tells his female psychoanalyst how he locked himself in the bathroom at age seven. Then there's Bert's Uncle Bill, who happens to be the prime minister of Great Britain, which may explain why spies and security men seem to follow Bert everywhere. Also unusual is Bert's stammer, which symbolizes hisand the author'sconviction that ordinary language is a poor medium to convey the "network of connections" called reality. The author, son of the late politician Sir Oswald Mosley, shapes a narrative the way a nuclear physicist might track a quantum experiment: in thousands of discrete moments, recording his character's immediate sense impressions, the gap between what they speak and what is churning within. First published in England in 1980, this strikingly original novel grew out of Mosley's Catastrophe Practice , a collection comprised of three experimental plays and one short novel ( Cypher )an omnibus volume which this publisher will release simultaneously.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Minerva
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0749399082
• ISBN 13: 9780749399085
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192