In The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary unleashes one of the most memorable, irrepressible characters in twentieth-century fiction: Gulley Jimson, an aging, impoverished painter with the soul of a William Blake and the morals of a street thief. Fresh out of prison for making harassing phone calls to a former patron, Gulley returns to the squalid streets and riverbanks of London with a single, burning obsession: finding a wall big enough for his next epic mural.
Gulley is an artist in the purest, most chaotic sense. Unconcerned with polite society, unpaid bills, or basic legality, he views the entire world—from stolen tubes of paint to the pristine walls of wealthy patrons’ apartments—as raw material for his creation. Cary captures the frantic, rapturous inner life of a creative genius, balancing laugh-out-loud picaresque comedy with a profound exploration of artistic integrity, sacrifice, and the eternal clash between the visionary individual and a respectable, unimaginative world.