Unstrung Harp, Or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel
The clichs of English country-house fiction and the more generic ``unspeakable horror of the literary life'' are memorably skewered in this urbane jeu first published in 1953 (and, scandalously, out of print ever since). Its protagonist, Mr. Earbrass, is a reclusive well-to-do bachelor author of middle years, with a profile (as seen in Gorey's serenely sinister accompanying drawings) rather resembling a benign croquet mallet and a neurasthenic sensibility hilariously vulnerable to every harrowing stage in the process of conceiving, completing, and publicizing his new novel. He himself, we're surely to infer, is the unstrung harpand the deadpan tale of his inharmonious relations with the dangerous world of letters is both a caution to would-be writers and (to use a word utterly inappropriate to Mr. Earbrass's strangled gentility) a hoot.  --Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.