miniZibaldone

The interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never the same and if, on occasion, they happen to coincide, this is a lucky accident. In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them. To read is to translate, for no two persons’ experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. In learning to read well, scholarship, valuable as it is, is less important than instinct; some great scholars have been poor translators. —W. H. Auden

You’ve said that at both the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge, you were “a bad student” who consistently read off-course. To the ears of my  contemporaries, reading off-course is the sort of procrastination that qualifies being a good student. Now, with the internet, we have so many distractions that is  almost impossible to stay focused on any one thing at a time, and work is scarcely one of them. Do you worry about the future of literature in this virtual  environment? Literature will win through the way it always has, by being too valuable to be ignored. All you have to do is write something as good as Pride and Prejudice . A  cinch. Finally, do you have any advice for young writers? When the young writers ask me for advice, I give them the same advice as I give my niece: stop right now if you can.

Eliade: That same year I also published an almost Joycean novel, called The Light That Failed. That same title as one of Kipling's books. Was that intentional? Eliade: Yes, because of a certain similarity between the two central characters. I've tried to reread the book several times since — impossible, I can't understand a word of it! I had been very impressed by an excerpt from Finnegans Wake , published under the title "Anna Livia Plurabelle," and I employed the stream-of-consciousness technique of Ulysses — for the first time in Romania, I believe. It was wholly unsuccessful. Even the critics didn't know what to make of it. It was totally unreadable. This influence Joyce had on you, and the taste for the word as such that it presupposes, does surprise me, rather. It seems to me that up until then you had been more inclined to treat language as simply a means to an end. Were you writing poetry at this time? In a sense yes, But I ought to ...

Two essays about writing and the English language by Tim Parks in  The New York Review of Books Why Write in English? Tim Parks Why not write in a foreign language? If people feel free to choose their profession, their religion, and even, these days, their sex, why not just decide which language you want to write in and go for it? Ever since Jhumpa Lahiri published In Other Words, her small memoir in Italian, people have been asking me, Why don’t you write in Italian, Tim? You’ve been in the country thirty-five years, after all. What keeps you tied to English? Is it just a question of economic convenience? That the market for books in English is bigger? That the world in general gives more attention to books written in English? Is that it? Certainly economics can be important. And politics too. Arguably, these were the factors that pushed Conrad and Nabokov to abandon their Polish and Russian mother tongues. If it is not possible to publish at home, or to publish the...

Standing by Words Wendell Berry Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition Wendell Berry  The Language Wars Henry Hitchings  Technique in Fiction Robie Macaulay  Read to Write Donald Murray  The Accidental Connoisseur Lawrence Osborne  Invitations to the World: Teaching and Writing for the Young Richard Peck  Signposts in a Strange Land Walker Percy  Another Sort of Learning James Schall  

An Intellectual Study: Irving Babbit by Thomas Nevin In Praise of Wisdom by Kim Paffenroth Stephen Langton by Maurice Powicke James Joyce's Ulysess by Stuart Gilbert Poems and Critics by Christopher Ricks     Hired Pens by Ronald Weber Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery by Thomas Mitchell Concerning E. M. Forster by Frank Kermode Vectors and Smoothable Curves by William Bronk The Paris Review 103  Carlyle's Essay on Burns  

H:cS2b, H:dS3b, L:dLB4, H:mB1, L:cLBg, L:aLBg, L:gLB2 Home by Marilynne Robinson When I Was a Child, I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson Thomas Merton: Preview of the Asian Journey by Walter Capps   No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton The Seven-Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing by Robert Inchausti Contemplation in a World of Action by Thomas Merton  

I like “He swings a mean pen” and “You said a mouthful” tremendously. Our most happy word, I think, is “blotto,” though an Englishman is always at his best in terms of address. If he calls a friend “Old bean” on Monday, it would never do to repeat it on the next day. Tuesday it would be “Old egg” and Wednesday would undoubtedly bring forth “Old crumpet.”   The chief characteristic of English humor is that it is cautious. American humor takes chances. That is the principal difference. The American humorist is single-minded; he wants to be funny. The English humorist wabbles; he would like to be funny, but he is haunted by the fear of being vulgar. The English humorist leads a sheltered life. Generally he is born in the private income class; he goes to a public school, then to a university, and then he is probably called to the bar. The American humorist, I believe, has not been sheltered in this way. As a rule, he has been a newspaper man. His humor is spontaneous; his jokes...

Tim Parks in The New York Review of Books  asks,  “ Is it really possible to be free as a writer? ” and  concludes that “celebrity, it would appear, breeds conformity.”   [full text]

The Gift of Wonder by Dale Ahlquist The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc   Utopia of Usurers by G. K. Chesterton   Stamboul Train by Graham Greene   Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing by Robert Inchausti   Ethics: The Drama of the Moral Life by Piotr Jaroszynski   As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader by Robert Knille   Utopia by Thomas More   The Epiphany Manual by Susan Muto   Journey Towards Easter by Joseph Ratzinger   A History of German Literature by J. G. Robertson   Beyond East and West by Robert Taft

The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose   The Journals of Sylvia Plath   The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman   Five Germanys I Have Known by Fritz Stern   Fool's Gold: The Inside of JP Morgan by Gillian Tett Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal by Glenn Tinder    Hired Pens by Ronald Weber

The Fall of the House of Credit by Alistaire Milne   The Unwinding: An Inner History of New America by George Packer   Human Smoke: Beginning of World War II by Nicholson Baker   The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright   The Nudist on the Late Shift by Po Bronson   The Ascent of Money: Financial History of World by Niall Ferguson   Shopping in Space: Essays by Elizabeth Young