First Books
Connolly's only novel, The Rock Pool (1936), is a satirical work describing a covey of dissolute drifters at an end of season French seaside resort, which was based on his experiences in the south of France. It was initially accepted by a London publishing house but they changed their minds. Faber and Faber was one of the publishers who rejected it, and so Connolly took it to Jack Kahane, who published it in Paris in 1936.
Connolly followed this up with a book of non-fiction, Enemies of Promise (1938), the second half of which is autobiographical. In it he attempted to explain his failure to produce the literary masterpiece that he and others believed he should have been capable of writing.
Read more about this topic: Cyril Connolly
Famous quotes containing the word books:
“Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil’s poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Certain books seem to have been written not for the purpose that we learn something from them but that we know that the author was a knowledgeable person.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)