∎ [PDF] Gratis Famous Last Words Timothy Findley 9780140062687 Books

Famous Last Words Timothy Findley 9780140062687 Books

Download As PDF : Famous Last Words Timothy Findley 9780140062687 Books

Famous Last Words Timothy Findley 9780140062687 Books

this book was my first by Timothy Findley...and i found it both intriguing and suspenseful. it was a historical fiction....page-turner. Recommended for the interesting writing style, the "possible" story line, and the suspense.


Tags : Famous Last Words [Timothy Findley] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice-cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen,Timothy Findley,Famous Last Words,Penguin Books,0140062688,2023y@225,Fiction General

Famous Last Words Timothy Findley 9780140062687 Books Reviews

This is available in New York s. Fascinating novel of intrigue and suspense
Findley's "Famous Last Words" is an excellent novel, although sometimes wordy. In reading other works by Findley I found many similarities in the plot. Findley truly mixes fact and fiction in a believable fashion. This book was set well before my time, but I found Findley's use of fiction was in all the right places. The main plot of the secret underbelly of a fascist conspiracy to take over Europe transpiring before, during, and after WWII that featured a writer named Maulberely was interesting but confusing. Famous Last Words is unique, and exciting, providing the realization that not everything is as it seems...
Interesting that The Wars deals with the First World War and one man's personal transformation both before the war and during it. Famous Last Words, in a sense, picks up where the other novel left off. While the author's fictional protagonist/antagonist Mauberly is the inadvertent co-narrator of the story, the novel really focuses on varying characters and motives both during and after the Second World War.
The most intriguing part of this novel is the discovery of Mauberly's writings on the walls of a European hotel room and the impending decisions to be made about its historical importance. American soldiers have to decide whether to preserve the historical narrative written by a questionable character or destroy all memory--artistic or otherwise--of a gruesome war.
One gets the sense that Findley is making a post-modern comment on the myth of truth-telling and the conflict between art and politics. But also, the irony of Findlay as storyteller commenting on the subjectivity of storytelling is not lost.
All the Findlay elements are here in this novel intrigue, mystery, psycho-analysis, and moral ambiguity. It does not have the power or punch of The Wars, but it is a confusingly fascinating read.
To begin with, every reader of this book should first read the poem "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" by Ezra Pound, since this fictional persona of Pound's ends up being the central character of this fascinating book. The book works mainly on two levels 1.) That of the intrigues, relationships and a certain "cabal" surrounding the rise of the Fascists and Nazis to power and their eventual defeat, all plausible (I did some research), and historically based, which makes the book the page-turner that it is. 2.) The embedded questionings of human motivations and actions and meditation-provoking sections futher calling into question what ultimately comprises history.
This second aspect is what makes the book more than just your average historical thriller. Findley has a fine manner of putting events into a poetic, philosophical cast. - But the book meanders a bit much, and somehow lacks a certain panache and poetic/philosophical heft that detracts from its effectiveness- Perhaps this is inevitable in a book that weaves in and out of so many different intrigues, betrayals and deceptions while at the same time employing a prose style that is downright contemplative at times. In other words, the two levels don't quite seem to mesh as they should.
Aside from a little muddlednesss, however, this is a very fine piece of literature. It will having you turning the pages in excited bewilderment while at the same time pondering the questions it provokes about mankind and history.
There is an intriguing passage in the middle of Mauberly's narrative where he imagines a future historian, a "dread academic, much too careful of his research" who will completely botch things in his account of these times "because he will not acknowledge that history is made in the electric moment, and its flowering is all in chance....There is more in history of impulse than we dare to know."---So, can a "true" history be written after all? Or does a fictional account, such as this book containing a narrative written by a fictional character, have the famous last words?
"Famous Last Words" is decidedly a minor novel, but it may be worth an hour or two of your time., if you're interested in pre-World War II aristocratic Europe. Characters include Von Ribbentrop, the creepy Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, Walter Schellenberg, a creepy SS official, Elsa Maxwell, a creepy society columnist, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, creepy parasites. It's a cast of characters that will have you longing for the delightful, natural joyfulness of Darth Vader.
Boring, start to..... page 50
Absolutely fantastic text with a bewitching story. One of the best books I have ever read, which incidentally makes sense of historical anomolies that otherwise might not gel.
this book was my first by Timothy Findley...and i found it both intriguing and suspenseful. it was a historical fiction....page-turner. Recommended for the interesting writing style, the "possible" story line, and the suspense.