Books by Al Alvarez

Al Alvarez's writing career has come in many guises. One of the most influential post-war critics, he has written profoundly and eloquently about writers and their craft for over fifty years. But Alvarez has also been a passionate amateur of risky pursuits and has written about these subjects with perception. This is a collection of his essays.

Talks about the art of writing from one of the most popular critics of our time.

Written by the author of "Poker and The Biggest Game in Town", this book gives a portrait of the climbing legend Mo Anthoine. It is suitable for fans of adrenaline sports.

The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez--poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player--has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez, now in his eighties, chronicles what it is to grow old with humor and fierce honesty--from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person''s Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss--Swimming, Sex and Sleep.As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be--to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he''s not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life''s small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night.

Much of the liveliness of Alvarez's story is inspired by the ambiguous fate of being an English Jew. He went from Oundle, an English public school, to Oxford, where an academic career beckoned; instead he embarked on life as a freelance writer. Meanwhile he climbed mountains and wrote books. This book gives an account of that journey.

An intelligent and sympathetic analysis of one of the true taboos of modern life.