D. J. Enright (1920–2002)

I have the old hard-bound version, given to my mother after my father died, with passages she underlined and my little sister's crayon scribbles. Growing up, I assumed it must be like The Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Guide for the Recently Deceased in Beetlejuice, so while curious, I viewed it with trepidation and kept my distance. Its contents were a mystery to me until my mom gave this to me as a resource for my poetry, which often explores death. In just the few months I've had it, show more it's been a fantastic resource for further reading as well as a source of solace in a time of grief. Some quotes are heartbreaking, some are heartwarming, and most provide interesting food for thought. It's well-organized and indexed, something often lacking in these sorts of compilations. My only complaint , which I suppose is a matter of personal taste, is that some of the quotes are too long, indeed they are full passages of text that can go on for a page or longer, and I prefer things more concise. show less

DJ Enright (1920-2002) was a significant minor poet (near-miss as Poet Laureate) who taught English literature at Konan University in the early 1950's. He was one of many English poets, novelists and critics unable to find academic posts at home who went to conquered territories and colonies to teach the natives English. The World of Dew' is a collection of impressionistic essays, written during Enright's first 18 months in Japan. Enright writes lightly, but there is a prevailing tone of show more disapproval, occasionally pettish, throughout. He didn't much like most things Japanese. He particularly didn't like most of the things that other Westerners liked about Japan. He didn't like the houses (flimsy, no privacy and no bookshelves), he didn't like Japanese poetry and he didn't like sitting on the floor in his socks. He thought that the exquisite refinements of the Tea Ceremony were emblematic of what he took to be an etiolated culture that had turned its back on human engagement. Sixty years have passed since Enright wrote 'The World of Dew'. It is worth reading now as the record of the encounter between a decent, intelligent and sensitive young Englishman and a nation suffering the grinding poverty following defeat in war, US occupation, the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the continuing fear of annihilation engendered by the H Bomb tests on Bikini Atoll. Aikichi Kuboyama, together with other crew members of a tuna boat that strayed into the test zone, was showered with radioactive dust and died while Enright was writing his impressions. There are essays on language, literature, academic life, marital relationships, geishas, night life, prostitution, class, caste and manners. There are, too, several of Enright's poems of which 'Traffic Regulations', on a Japanese businessman's night out, dancing with the bar girls, is memorable. It ends with the affectionate admonition: 'Roll respected, roll respectable, roll respectful, home to bed.'

Enright was often appalled by what he saw in Japan. His final chapter opens with a fine flourish of English condescension: 'What' he asks, 'should Japan do? And then he confesses, almost immediately that he has no idea what Japan should do. His despair surfaces for a moment when he suggests, and immediately withdraws the suggestion, that the overpopulation and poverty of Japan might be resolved if half the population were to 'undergo compulsory euthanasia'. That final appalling reflection, like much else in The 'World of Dew', makes it a book for the time-traveller. show less

A solid achievement by a working poet, this compendium of the supernatural in the literary canon and more besides is a useful reference book that covers the ground more than adequately.

Enright's terse introductions are perhaps less enlightening and more obscure than they need to be - the perils of the poet as curator - but the content is elegantly and appropriately chosen.

His entries cover pretty well everything useful on the subject with a strong orientation towards ghosts and revenants, show more including their relationship to love and sex and animal spirits.

There are sections on magicians and possession, witchcraft, demons and angels, the classic monster tropes, the fairy folk, precognition, dreams and telepathy, near death and spontaneous combustion.

Add to this the finely tuned sections on the supernatural and artistic creativity, on spiritualism and on the various literary and cultural responses to the supernatural and the ground is covered.

Nor is it just a list of references. It is themed within the themes so you have, for example, no fewer than nine references to the Browning-Douglas Home controversy about spiritualism which tell a sort of story.

The whole work is finely calibrated so that one short passage connects in some way to the next giving a total picture of the place of the supernatural in the English cultured mind.

And what is that place? Largely sceptical but mildly so, refusing to be hide-bound, allowing wiggle room for the possibility of the impossible and enjoying the supernatural as imaginative frisson.

A very literary work with a minimum of science and little overt encouragement (though no condemnation) of the enthusiast and the deep believer. In short, a most English literary guide. show less

While darkly comic at points, I do not think this novel merits the "Lucky Jim in Egypt" tag that's plastered on its cover. It has none of the humane warmth of Lucky Jim, and I think it was lumped with Amis's book because its release happened to coincide with a vogue for "angry young men" novels and because reviewers in the 50s were at a loss how to categorize it. It is funny, but only if you are able to find the humor in living in a hostile police state at the tail end of a crumbling empire. show more Enright's Alexandria is filled with unease, caught between western influences and growing Islamicism.

All that makes it an interesting social document, but for me it was not a compelling piece of fiction. I found the characters undifferentiated except by cliche and couldn't really come to care about anything that happened in the book. There are sublime scenes of intentionally Kafkaesque wrangling with the Egyptian authorities, but it all feels like window dressing. The two main English characters, Packet and Bacon, merged in my mind, as similar to one another as the rashers in a Packet of Bacon. show less