The ​Liar 10 csillagozás

Stephen Fry: The Liar Stephen Fry: The Liar Stephen Fry: The Liar Stephen Fry: The Liar Stephen Fry: The Liar

The spirits of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh glower benignly over this very funny first novel by Stephen Fry. The novel has an ingenious plot filled with surprises and glittering with hilarious, often indecent inventions: a pugnacious faculty meeting that collapses into an exchange of obscenities, the fabrication of a 'lost' pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and an exercise in intellectual gamesmanship that engages some of the finest minds and blackest hearts in England. Stephen Fry's sympathetic portrayal of his defiantly unconventional hero makes for an outrageously entertaining debut.

Eredeti megjelenés éve: 1991

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Arrow, London, 2011
388 oldal · puhatáblás · ISBN: 9780099457053
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Cornerstone, 2010
402 oldal · ASIN: B004071TAY
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Arrow, Washington, 2004
368 oldal · ISBN: 9780099457053

2 további kiadás


Enciklopédia 2


Várólistára tette 6

Kívánságlistára tette 6


Kiemelt értékelések

hunny>!
Stephen Fry: The Liar

Mióta harminc könyvet „olvasok” egyszerre, a szobám (meg a molyos polcom) csatatér hörgő sebesültekkel, akik már hetek, sőt hónapok óta a kegyelemdöfésre várnak. Ezek után felüdülés volt végre sorban olvasni pár könyvet, és a Liar igazi szem volt köztük a láncban. Az utána elkezdett regény első oldalain rögtön belefutottam újra a „cricket umpire” kifejezésbe, és hát a krikett, az ugye fontos szerepet játszott Fry-nál is. Sőt, könyvének egyik legmisztikusabb elemévé vált számomra, krikettügyben ugyanis csak Carrollból okultam eddig, annyit tudok róla, hogy rózsaszín, csőrös ütőt is alkalmazhatunk a játékban.

Na de ez csupán felszíni egybeesés, ugye. Az már kellemesebb meglepetés volt, hogy az ezelőtt olvasott Lynne Truss-féle központozási bestseller egyik hasonlata jelentette a megoldást, amikor próbáltam kiötleni, hogy ez a Fry könyv akkor így most hogy.

Words strung together without punctuation recall (Fry's novel recalls) those murky murals Rolf Harris used to paint, where you kept tilting your head and wondering what it was. Then Rolf would dip a small brush into a pot of white and – to the deathless, teasing line, “Can you guess what it is yet?” – add a line here, a dot there, a curly bit, and suddenly all was clear. Good heavens, it looked like just a splodge of colours and all along it was a kangaroo in football boots having a sandwich!

Szóval ez a falfestmény készülőben (300+ oldalon át) egy kevéssé értelmezhető (de élvezhető) színplacsni-halmaz, aztán néhány utolsó ecsetvonás, és (majdnem) minden kitisztul. Igen, ez egy focicsukás, szendvicset majszoló kenguru! (Fry aztán odaken még egy kis festéket, és lám, a kép valójában egy fuvolázó jegesmedvét ábrázol az Ötödik sugárúton.)

3 hozzászólás
Bogas>!
Stephen Fry: The Liar

Úgy a 200. oldalon az jutott eszembe, hogy ha Adrian Healey elszavalná a Tiszta szívvelt, azzal, hogy ő írta, itt az előbb, szemem se rebbenne.


Népszerű idézetek

hunny>!

'The Hungarians have a wonderful word,' said Trefusis. 'It is puszipajtás and means roughly „someone you know well enough to kiss in the street”. They are a demonstrative and affectionate people, the Hungarians, and enthusiastic social kissers. „Do you know young Adrian?” you might ask and they might reply, "I know him, but we're not exactly puszipajtás."'

325-6. oldal

1 hozzászólás
Starman>!

'It's so easy to explain, Hugo. Easy and very hard. Just one word covers it all.'
'What word? No word could explain it. Not a whole Bible of words.'
'It's a common enough word, but it might mean something different to you than it does to me. Language is a bastard. So let's invent new word. „Libb” will do. I libbed you. That's all there is to it. I was libb with you. My libb for you informed my every waking and sleeping hour for… for God knows how many years. Nothing has ever been as powerful as that libb. It was the guiding force of my life, it haunted me then and haunts me still.'
'You were in love with me?'
'Well now, that's your word. Libb has a great deal in common with love, I admit. But love is supposed to be creative, not destructive, and as you have found out, my libb turned out to be very harmful indeed.'

Tünde_HV>!

I don't love anyone, anything or anybody. Well 'anyone' and 'anybody' are the same, but I can't think of a third 'any'. Which reminds me… that bloody Martini advert, it's bugged me for years. 'Anytime, any place, anywhere.' What the fuck difference is there between any place and anywhere? Some advertising copywriter was paid thousands for that piece of rubbish.

Black_Venus>!

– I wonder if you have ever heard, Sir David, of Walton's Third Law?
– No matter how much you shake it, the last drop always runs down your leg?

349. oldal

2 hozzászólás
hunny>!

'We will not have enough money to create any more Junior Research Fellows in the Arts for at least two years.'
'Oh, how sad,' said Trefusis.
'You are not concerned for your department?'
'My department? My department is English, Master.'
'Well precisely.'
'What has English to do with „the Arts”, whatever they may be? I deal in an exact science, philology. My colleagues deal with an exact science, the analysis of literature.'
'Oh poppycock,' said Menzies.
'No, if anything it's hard shit,' said Trefusis.
'Really, Donald!' said the President. 'I am sure there is no need…'
'Professor Trefusis,' said Menzies, 'this is a minuted meeting of adults, if you feel you can't preserve the decencies of debate then perhaps you should leave.'
'My dear old Garth,' said Trefusis, 'I can only say that you started it. The English language is an arsenal of weapons; if you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time. „Poppycock” means „soft shit” – from the Dutch, I need scarcely remind you, pappe kak.'
Menzies purpled and fell silent.

65-66. oldal

3 hozzászólás
hunny>!

I am magnificently prepared for the long littleness of life. There is diddley-squat for me to look forward to. Zilch, zero, zip-all, sweet lipperty-pipperty nothing. The only thought that will give me the energy to carry on is that someone has a life which would be diminished by my departure from it.

155. oldal

Starman>!

'Boy,' said Mr Sutcliffe, tugging at a sack, 'when you see a load of crows together, them's rooks. And when see a rook on its own, that's a fucking crow.'
'Oh,' said Adrian. 'Right. But supposing a rook gets lost or wanders off by itself. What would you call that?'
Mr Sutcliffe roared with laughter.
'Well I don't know about you, lad, but I'd call it a crook!'

esővíz>!

Everyone has their time, Adrian thought. You can meet people of thirty and know that when their hair is grey and their face lined, they will look wonderfully at their best. That Professor, for one, Donald Trefusis. He must have looked ridiculous as a teenager, but now he has come into his own. Others, whose proper age was twenty-five, grew old grotesquely, their baldness and thickening waistlines an affront to what they once were. There were men like that on the staff at Chartham, fifty or sixty years old, but whose true characters were only discernible in hints of some former passion and vigour that would come out when they were excited. The headmaster, on the other hand, was a pompous forty-one, waiting to ripen into a delicious sixty-five.

277.

1 hozzászólás
hunny>!

Trefusis's quarters could be described in one word.
Books.
Books and books and books. And then, just when an observer might be lured into thinking that that must be it, more books.
Barely a square inch of wood or wall or floor was visible. Walking was only allowed by pathways cut between the piles of books. Treading these pathways with books waist-high either side was like negotiating a maze. Trefusis called the room his 'librarinth'. Areas where seating was possible were like lagoons in a coral strand of books.
Adrian supposed that any man who could speak twenty-three languages and read forty was likely to collect a few improving volumes along the way. Trefusis himself was highly dismissive of them.
'Waste of trees,' he had once said. 'Stupid, ugly, clumsy, heavy things. The sooner technology comes up with a reliable alternative the better.'

51. oldal

hunny>!

Too many cocks spoil the brothel.

280. oldal


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