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Dirt & Deity: Life of Robert Burns
(Paperback, 1996)
Other Editions...
Author: Ian McIntyre
This bicentenary biography reveals Burns to have been an underachieving, self-defeating, philanderin...
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LIST PRICE
$19.99
Save 89%
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Format: Paperback
ISBN-10: 0006387594
ISBN-13: 9780006387596
Nov 1996
Publisher: Trafalgar Square
461 pages
Language: English |
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In general items shipped via Media Mail should arrive in 2-9 days (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) from the time of shipping
* ML=ships from multiple locations, AE/AP/AA=ships from U.S. Military location.
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Details
Synopsis
This bicentenary biography reveals Burns to have been an underachieving, self-defeating, philandering drunk who nonetheless became Scotland's national poet and the composer of some of its greatest songs. The book sheds light on one of the poet's major problems, which was that in becoming a celebrated writer he effectively cut himself off from the roots that inspired his talent.
| Size | | Length: | 461 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 13.6 oz |
Industry Reviews
"McIntyre strives mightily to tell the facts about Burns; to that end, he constructs a fabric made up of excerpts from letters, recollections of those who knew Burns, occasional public records, and the testimony of Burns' poems. He stitches these materials together with clear, precise prose, concisely sketching Burns' historical and cultural milieu as he proceeds, and he refrains from speculating about cloudy details in Burns' life or interpreting Burns' works. He doesn't coddle old legends or foster new ones but reinforces the familiar image of Burns as a sparkling conversationalist, something of a rake (as were several friends) and, unfortunately for his longevity (he died at 37), rather a boozer--and that he was, supremely, what Jews call a mensch, for a' that. "
"'Dirt & Deity' is a sane, gritty and sensible account of the man whose reputation as an artist is sacrificed annually at the altar of Scottish self-regard."
Times Literary Supplement - Ian Bell (12/29/1995)
"[T]his latest biography sets about the task of stripping away the mythology that has grown up around Burns...not, it has to be said, for the first time. It does so by concentrating on the poet's own voluminous correspondence, on documentary sources, and on...first hand testimony....The very contradictions make Burns more human, and allow him to be embraced more warmly by more people than any other poet living or dead."
Literary Review - Magnus Linklater (11/01/1995)
"Ian McIntyre is a biographer who, from his first sentence, transports you absolutely into the world of his subject. Opening his pages is like stepping through doors into 18th-Century Scotland and meeting its inhabitants face to face. He sets the scenes with marvellous economy and richness....Burns is the focus of a large industry, but McIntyre does better by giving us a shrewd, clear, comprehensive and wonderfully readable portrait of Burns as fallible man and gifted poet."
Financial Times - A. C. Grayling
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