D. J. Enright: Life, The "Enright Affair", Timeline, Works, and a List of Books by Author D. J. Enright

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Dennis Joseph Enright (11 March 1920 — 31 December 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, and general man of letters.

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Enright gained some notoriety in Singapore after his inaugural lecture at the University of Singapore on 17 November 1960, titled "Robert Graves and the Decline of Modernism". His introductory remarks on the state of culture in Singapore were the subject of a Straits Times article "'Hands Off' Challenge to 'Culture Vultures'" the next day. Among other things, he had said that it wasimportant for Singapore and Malaya to remain "culturally open", that culture was something to be left for the people to build up, and that for the government to institute "a sarong culture, complete with pantun competitions and so forth" was futile. Some quotes include:

Art does not begin in a test-tube, it does not take its origin in good sentiments and clean-shaven, upstanding young thoughts.

Leave the people free to make their own mistakes, to suffer and to discover. Authority must leave us to fight even that deadly battle over whether or not to enter a place of entertainment wherein lurks a juke-box, and whether or not to slip a coin into the machine.

The following day, Enright was summoned by the Ministry for Labour and Law regarding his foreigner work permit, and was handed a letter there by the Minister for Culture S. Rajaratnam, which had also been released to the press. This letter admonished Enright for "involv[ing] [himself] in political affairs which are the concern of local people", not "visitors, including mendicant professors", and said that the government "ha[s] no time for asinine sneers by passing aliens about the futility of 'sarong culture complete with pantun competitions' particularly when it comes from beatnik professors." There was also some criticism that Enright had been insensitive towards Malays and their so-called "sarong culture."

With some mediation from the Academic Staff Association of the university, it was agreed that to put the matter to rest, Enright would write a letter of apology and clarification, the government would reply, and both were to be printed in the newspapers. Although the affair was "essentially dead" after that, according to Enright, it would still be brought up periodicially in discussions of local culture and academic freedom.

Enright gives his account of the incident in his Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (pp. 124-151).

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A Commentary on Goethe's Faust (1949)
The Laughing Hyena and Other Poems (1953)
Poets of the 1950s (1955) editor, anthology
Academic Year (1955) novel
The World of Dew: Aspects of Living Japan (1955)
Bread Rather than Blossoms (1956) poems
The Year of the Monkey (1956) poems
The Apothecary's Shop (1957) essays
Heaven Knows Where (1957) novel
The Poetry of Living Japan (1958) editor with Takamichi Ninomiya
Insufficient Poppy (1960) novel
Robert Graves and the Decline of Modernism (1960)
Some Men Are Brothers (1960) poems
Addictions (1962) poems
English Critical Texts 16th Century to 20th Century (1963) editor with Ernst de Chickera
The Old Adam (1965)
Conspirators and Poets (1966) essays
Selected Poems (1968)
Unlawful Assembly (1968) poems
Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (1969)
Shakespeare And The Students (1970)
In the Basilica of the Annunciation (1971) broadsheet poem
Daughters of Earth (1972) poems
Foreign Devils (1972) poems
Man is an Onion: Reviews and Essays (1972)
The Terrible Shears - Scenes from a Twenties Childhood (1973)
Rhyme times rhyme (1974)
The Rebel (1974) poem
A Choice of Milton's Verse (1975) editor
Penguin Modern Poets 26 (1975) with Dannie Abse and Michael Longley
Sad Ires (1975) poems
The Joke Shop (1976) novel
Paradise Illustrated (1978) poems
Wild Ghost Chase (1978) novel
A Faust Book (1979) poems
Walking in the Harz Mountains, Faust Senses the Presence of God (1979) poem
Beyond Land's End (1979) novel
The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945 —1980 (1980) editor
Collected Poems (1981)
A Mania for Sentences: Essays on G. Grass, H. Boll, Frisch, Flaubert & Others (1983)
Fair of Speech: The Uses of Euphemism (1985) editor
Instant Chronicles: A Life (1985)
The Oxford Book of Death (1985) editor
The Alluring Problem - An Essay on Irony (1986)
Collected Poems 1987 (1987)
Fields of Vision: Essays on Literature, Language, and Television (1988)
Ill at Ease: Writers on Ailments Real and Imagined (1989) editor
The Faber Book of Fevers and Frets (1989) editor
Oxford Book of Friendship (1991) editor with David Rawlinson
Selected Poems 1990, Oxford, (1990)
Under the Circumstances : Poems and Prose (1991)
The Way of The Cat (1992)
Old Men and Comets (1993) poems
The Oxford Book of the Supernatural (1994) editor
Interplay: A Kind of Commonplace Book (1995)
Collected Poems: 1948-1998 (1998)
Telling Tales (1999)
Play Resumed: A Journal
Signs and Wonders: Selected Essays (2001)
Injury Time (2003)

Total Books: 38

1993 - The Way of the Cat (Paperback) → Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780060924317
ISBN-10: 0060924314
Genres: Arts & Photography, Children's Books, Literature & Fiction, Crafts, Hobbies & Home, Outdoors & Nature

Currently 2.5/5 Stars.

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