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Frederic Raphael

Rough Copy

Personal Terms II

Frederic Raphael

Cover Picture of Rough Copy: Personal Terms II
10% off eBook (EPUB)
Series: Personal Terms
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Film, Memoirs
Imprint: Lives and Letters
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
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(Pub. Jun 2013)
9781847777430
£9.95 £8.96
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  • Reviews
  • 30.12.70: Richard Zanuck has been fired by Fox. It now becomes clear that Darryl was behind the torpedoing of Guilt. The final thumbs-down came after R.Z.'s trip to Europe to see his father (and his father's mistress). Darryl reminds one of the old Ruhr steel-masters. How can you help admiring the nauseating resolution of a man in his late sixties who embraces the loneliness of throwing away his own son? What self-sufficiency!

    The first that Dick Zanuck and David Brown knew of their eviction was when their names were painted out in the parking lot. A quarrel between Dick and Darryl ended with D.Z. asking David Brown what he thought. David said he agreed with Dick. Darryl never spoke to him again. Dick was accused of being responsible for
    Tora, Tora, Tora. In fact, it was Darryl's project. It manifestly shared paternity with The Longest Day, with which D.Z. saved Fox the last time it was in a hole. The real bone of contention is said to be Darryl's reportedly Lesbian mistress, who treats him badly. Richard Z. refused to renew her option; hence his father his.

    A Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year, 2004

    'My notebooks are my conscience,' writes Frederic Raphael. 'They contain a writer's letters to himself.' This second volume of his notebooks covers the first three years of the 1970s: years of slump, treacheries and deceits in the film world, of literary achievement and private tragi-comedies - the storm that washes away weeks of hard work in the garden of the Raphaels' French farmhouse, the serious accident in which his father nearly dies, before being unexpectedly restored to alarmingly irascible life.

    Raphael's sharp wit spares no one, not the sacred monsters of the movie business and the literary world, nor the incidental characters whose unguarded stories and personalities become the material for fiction. Least of all does he spare himself. Rough Copy is a self-portrait of a writer whose precision and honesty are both entertaining and searching.
    Introduction

    1970
    1971
    1972
    1973

    Index
    Frederic Raphael was born in Chicago in 1931 and educated at Charterhouse and St John’s College, Cambridge. His novels include The Glittering Prizes (1976), A Double Life (1993), Coast to Coast (1998) and Fame and Fortune (2007); he has also written short stories and biographies of Somerset Maugham and Byron. Frederic ... read more
    Praise for Frederic Raphael 'Frederic Raphael leaves unlocked a virtual postbox of unsent letters. Insistently addressing "you", the real subject is "I". He beards old friends, family, collaborators and antagonists; settling scores; mentioning his Oscar once or twice; allowing his wit free rein.'
    Brian Morton, The Tablet
    'This book contains tremendous erudition and intelligence, blistering scorn for mediocrities and frauds, tenderness for a few favourites and irony at its most shapely and elegant.'
    Richard Davenport-Hines, Literary Review
    'Raphael's intelligence and acerbic wit are undiminished... Whether you've lived through most of the years covered in Last Post or not you'll be bound to find these letters to the dead who cannot answer back immensely entertaining.'
    Brian Martin, The Spectator
    'A hilarious and disillusioned page-turner.'
    Peter Green, The TLS
     'Against the Stream offers many insights into Raphael's "double life". An American who made his career in Britain. A Jew who went to Charterhouse and Cambridge. A Hollywood script-doctor who read Ancient Greek for fun. Vain, sharp-tongued, but the sort of truth-teller Britain needed then and needs now.'
    David Herman, Standpoint

      'In these notebooks, Raphael shows himself alert to every vanity but his own, a shortcoming that, far from repelling a reader, becomes part and parcel of the their fascination. He is one of those writers who most reveals himself in his acerbic anatomy of others.'
    Anthony Quinn, Telegraph
       'Aphoristic, lapidary and sumptuously reflective by turns, Personal Terms is a joy to read both for Raphael's prose and mental powers. It is a book of iridescent intelligence, seductive charm, urbane temper and unflagging delight - indeed a minor masterpiece.'
    Times Literary Supplement

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