Gordon Bowker, Author . Palgrave $35 (512p) ISBN 978-0-312-23841-4
Bowker's centenary biography is the best of the many since Orwell's death at 46, of tuberculosis, in 1950. Whether in memorable essays on contemporary culture or in novels in which the bleak Orwellian landscape remains consistently familiar,
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Gordon Bowker, Author Abacus (UK) $16 (495p) ISBN 978-0-349-11551-1
George Orwell entered the world as Eric Blair, a man whose eventual decision to hide behind a pseudonym created a double life between the private ""Blair"" and the public ""Orwell."" So theorizes Bowker in this detailed political and psychological...
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Gordon Bowker, Author St. Martin's Press $29.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-312-12748-0
At age 15, English novelist Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) composed hymns of hatred against his unloving mother and rebelled against his humorless, authoritarian father, a wealthy Liverpool cotton broker. At Cambridge, Lowry recklessly goaded suicidal...
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Gordon Bowker, Author St. Martin's Press $29.95 (496p) ISBN 978-0-312-17225-1
Try to write a biography of a writer whose ""power over language was daunting"" without being able to quote from his works--published or unpublished-- ""except occasionally and briefly for purposes of literary explanation or critical comment."" With
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Gordon Bowker. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 (624p) ISBN 978-0-374-17872-7
I guess the man’s a genius, but what a dirty mind he has,” Nora Barnacle said after reading Ulysses. For “dirty,” substitute Joyce’s view of the human condition as comedy: Rabelaisian, rather than divine. Bowker’s splendid, insightful, and witty...
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