A. Alvarez

The Savage God

A Study of Suicide

"To write a beautiful book about suicide . . . to transform the subject into something beautiful—this is the forbidding task that A. Alvarez set for himself. . . . He has succeeded."—New York Times

"Suicide," writes the notes English poet and critic A. Alvarez, "has permeated Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed out." Although the aims of this compelling, compassionate work are boradly cultural and literary, the narrative is rooted in personal experience: it begins with a long memoir of Sylvia Plath, and ends with an account of the author's own suicide attempt. Within this dramatic framework, Alvarez launches his enquiry into the final taboo of human behavior, and traces changing attitudes towards suicide from the perspective of literature. He follows the black thread leading from Dante through Donne and the romantic agony, to the Savage God at the heart of modern literature.

"The Savage God is the first study to attemp the historical, literary, philosophical dimensions of the mystery of suicide. . . . It is brilliant, touching, and oddly passionate. . . . An ambitious, exhaustive exploration into the nature of the self-destructive element in man."—Village Voice

A. Alvarez was born in London in 1929 and educated at Oundle School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. For a time he researched and taught in Oxford and America, but since 1956 has lived as a freelance writer in London, traveling a good deal and making occasional academic forays to the States—including a trip as Visiting Profesor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He delivered the Gauss Seminars on criticism at Princeton University in 1958. Mr. Alvarez has been poetry editor and critic at the Observer, a contributor to the New Statesman for ten years, and its drama critic from 1958 to 1960. In 1961 he received the Vachel Lindsay Prize for Poetry from Poetry, and in the following years he edited and introduced the best-selling anthology, The New Poetry. His other publications include The Shaping Spirit, The School of Donne, Under Pressure, and Feeding the Rat. He has written several volumes of poetry.

1990 / paperback / ISBN 0-393-30657-7 / 5" x 7-1/4" / 320 pages / Psychology/Literature