G. Cabrera Infante
Here is the shortlist of the best books I've read this year.
Loving Garbo by Hugo Vickers (Cape, £29.99). Probably the most entertaining biography of the year, This fountainhead of gossip is not about Garbo or about Cecil Beaton but about Mercedes de Acosta, a Cuban lesbienne extraordinaire loved by Garbo.
The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Little, Brown, £16.99), A book like Schubert's Unfinished: beautiful, moving and truncated.
A Biographical Dictionary of Film (revised) by David Thomson (Deutsch, £25). Everything you wanted to know about the movies but didn't care to ask. This edition is even better than the original one of 20 years ago.
Anthony Browne's King Kong from the story conceived by Edgar and Merian C. Cooper (Julia McRae Books, £12.95). One of the most beautiful colour books ever. As exciting as the original movie in black and white — and of course beauty still kills the beast.
La Saga de los Marx (The Saga of the Manes) by Juan Goytisola (Mondadori, Barcelona). The Marx brothers meet 01' Man Karl and politics becomes slapstick by other means. 'This means war!' said Grouch°.
This year most of the books were over- rated, over long and overpriced.
Previous page
