From an e-mail to Justin Isis:
I sometimes think I'd like to write a very thorough behind-the-scenes look at writing. I just feel like the whole thing is sickeningly wrong.
I don't know why it is that I sometimes suddenly take a liking to a particular writer. I don't think you can really work out a pattern. And yet, more often than not, I find that those writers I happen to like turn out to be those more than usually shat on by critics and the world at large. I do not do this on purpose. It makes me feel a kind of rage, and I get this feeling like, "So that's why I've never got anywhere in life! The world is full of cunts* that I'd like to kill." Just today I was thinking about how I'd like to kill lots of people, and how I'm tired of being nice to people. In a way perhaps it's related to your wall idea of… [Lots of writing about stuff that happened at the weekend.]
Anyway, I've gone off the track a bit.
I've been looking up stuff about Carson McCullers:
http://books.google.com/books?id=15v9sJJQYwgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA1,M1
There are bits like this:
John Brown, one of her first editors in the 1940s… seems to wonder what could possibly prompt a full-length biography of Carson McCullers: "Granted, there are some fine texts, but, even so, she was not really much of a writer."
Apart from anything else, this doesn't even make sense. How can someone who's not much of a writer produce some fine texts? It makes me think there's some kind of unspoken agenda here. What would have made her much of a writer? Going to Harvard? Being friends with Edmund Wilson? Being a man? What? I really don't get it. And yet, whatever this hidden agenda is, it seems to crop up in all sorts of ways, just to ruin life on earth. I can sense it in a wordless way.
And then Arthur Miller says, "Moving, yes, but a minor author. And broken by illness at such a young age."
What kind of fucking non-sequitur is that? The kind that is hiding some portion of Miller's thought. But what? What is he trying to divert attention from by mentioning her illness and early death? What, is he saying she was irresponsible? A freak? The implication, of course, is that he is a major writer (rather than just a dried up old cunt) and is therefore in a position to judge who is major and minor, who has acheived the same kind of 'importance' as him, and who hasn't. And he's so important he can titter at McCullers's grave like this, using her very death as an insult against her (adding INSULT TO DEATH, let alone insult to injury), then get back to necking Monroe while he taps something out on his typewriter with his left hand, being, as he is, the accountant of important social problems.
So, these and other reasons lead me to feel like evil always triumphs.
Oh yeah, and it's typical that a writer would be shat on by her very own editor, like Carson was by that John Brown fellow.
[*Note to American readers. I've heard that in the States, as a slang phrase, this usually refers to women. I'm not referring to women when I used this word, but to bastards, though I suppose that may include women.]
I forgot to write in the e-mail that I appreciate Graham Greene's take on Carson McCullers. Of Greene, I've only read Brighton Rock. Overall, I liked it, although it took me ages to finish. Anyway, here's what Greene said:
Miss McCullers and perhaps Mr. Faulkner are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence with an original poetic sensibility. I prefer Miss McCullers to Mr. Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D. H. Lawrence because she has no message.
Good old Greene.
I like Greene’s “The Quiet American” a lot. I was excited when I heard that it would be made into a movie. I then got hugely disappointed when I learnt Michael Caine was going to play the main character. Greene drew on his own experience while working for MI6. I read the book twice in the 80s and was surprised that no one heard about it when I mentioned it in America and that they made a movie out of it only in 2002.
Peter A Leonard writes:
Just for the record Greene’s book has been twice filmed. Initially in the 1950s starring Audie Murphey and Michael Redgrave. The Michael Caine version was way superior to its predecessor.The adaptation of novel into film is frequently disappointing to those of us who are aficionados of the novel in the first instance. I have seen great films developed from poor novels, but more often poor films ripped from the guts of great novels, like some messy celluloid caesarian performed for the benefit of the project’s backers.Regards:jester:
Quentin, I just skimmed your post quickly as I must leave to clean someone’s pool. I’ll read it again and comment more later.
I stand corrected.:D It makes me happy to hear that in fact as Greene’s fan. :up:I have read good review of the Caine version. I am not surprised that it is superior to its predecessor. I just don’t like Caine playing that part. :left:
Peter A Leonard writes:
Wasn’t it Arthur Miller who once declared (with suitably “paralyzing pomp”) “We have had more than one extraordinary dramatist who was a cripple as a writer, and this is lamentable but not ruinous.”Could this comment have been autobiographical, do you suppose? At least in part?Ah, perhaps, he’d glimpsed the future, our present – and beyond? We live, after all, in the audio-visual age. The written word is displaced by the image. The electronic impulse rules. This radical change leaves us unable to respond as the vast temples of literature are gradually abandoned, and we sit listening to the pitter patter of gently falling acid rain on the world around us.I think of Malcolm Lowery (God alone knows why?) and his rapid descent into alcoholism. He was very young when he embarked on the Pyrrhus to see the world and there swallowed large amounts of gin to wash down his disappointment at what he’d seen. Still he played the ukulele, a much underrated instrument, and played it well, drunk or sober, so they say.Apart from the continuous drinking, the psychiatric hospitals, the brief spells in prison, and frequent suicide attempts, some perhaps more genuine than others, he still found time to write, rewrite, and write again, “Under the Volcano”, a most impressive achievement for any writer let alone one with Lowery’s phobias and dipsomania.Interestingly Carson McCullers like to drink as did her husband Reeves. She tended to populate her fiction with grotesques, cripples, in fact Lowery could well have been a character out of one of her books when you think about it. In 1941 Carson divorced Reeves after he’d forged her signature on some cheques; they’d both had affairs with same sex partners during the marriage. Also in 41 she had her first stroke, in the February I believe. During this same period she lived in a menage a tois with Reeves and David Diamond – they all loved each other with a typically southern passion, all very Tennessee Williams. But in 45 she remarried Reeves. In 47 she had two more strokes and in 1948 attempted suicide. The drinking became heavier, Reeves became abusive, carefully planning their double suicide – ultimately in Paris (in truly gothic southern style). Carson escaped back to the US. Reeves didn’t. Walter Allen, the writer and critic, had nothing but good things to say about Carson. He called her one of the “most remarkable novelists the south has produced”. V S Pritchett, her British editor, called her “a genius…and the most remarkable novelist to come out of America for a generation.” She certainly won a lot of awards for her writing – not that that means very much in itself. For my part “Reflection in a Golden Eye” is a fave, as they say: “Within its 183 pages a child is born (some of whose fingers are grown together), an Army captain suffers from bisexual impotence, a half-witted private rides nude in the woods, a stallion is tortured, a murder is done, a heartbroken wife cuts off her nipples with garden shears.” – Time. Feb. 17, 1941.They don’t write ‘em like that anymore!Welcome back. :jester:
Ha ha. You’re trying to catch me out, now, and it’s all too easily done. I’ll write more soon.
As usual I’m surprised there are people willing to humour me. I think we might as well assume that I’m an idiot and just get used to it – that’s what I have to do. If we make that assumption, then when occasionally I do say something that makes sense, or sounds inspired, we can all be very disappointed and suck our teeth awkwardly and change the subject.“We have had more than one extraordinary dramatist who was a cripple as a writer, and this is lamentable but not ruinous.”Presumably heavy irony. Yes, but my conjecture for Miller’s reasons for not designating McCullers major were not meant to be accurate guesses. It was more like, “Surely not?!”Walter Allen, the writer and critic, had nothing but good things to say about Carson. He called her one of the “most remarkable novelists the south has produced”. V S Pritchett, her British editor, called her “a genius…and the most remarkable novelist to come out of America for a generation.” She certainly won a lot of awards for her writing – not that that means very much in itself.Yes, it seems she was lionised from a young age. Maybe I’m just seizing on one or two adverse pieces of criticism in order to martyr her in my soul. After all, she’s hardly as obscure as I am. Having said that, most people, when I mention the name, say, “Who?” Her stories seem to be more famous than she is. For my part “Reflection in a Golden Eye” is a fave, as they say: “Within its 183 pages a child is born (some of whose fingers are grown together), an Army captain suffers from bisexual impotence, a half-witted private rides nude in the woods, a stallion is tortured, a murder is done, a heartbroken wife cuts off her nipples with garden shears.” – Time. Feb. 17, 1941.Well, you need say no more, I shall take it up soon after I have put The Heart is a Lonely Fishmonger down. I like Greene’s “The Quiet American” a lot. I was excited when I heard that it would be made into a movie. I then got hugely disappointed when I learnt Michael Caine was going to play the main character. Greene drew on his own experience while working for MI6. I read the book twice in the 80s and was surprised that no one heard about it when I mentioned it in America and that they made a movie out of it only in 2002.Apart from anything else, Greene seemed to have a gift for writing understated but evocative titles. I want to read most of his books on the strength of the titles alone.Quentin, I just skimmed your post quickly as I must leave to clean someone’s pool. I’ll read it again and comment more later. Please feel free.
Well now after being interrupted so many times yesterday I have no idea what I was going to say. However, I reread my short comment and realized I must have been thinking about what I had to do which was ‘skim’ the pool.First of all, you are not an idiot.Secondly, I still have no idea what I was going to say, but all day I kept trying to remember a book of my mom’s I read. She favored weird, dark, obscure stories. This book was about a family of carnival people. They purposely ingested various things while producing children so the whole family were, more or less, mutants. This was a very disturbing story for me as I was right in the middle of child bearing years. Anyway, this family was an exhibit at the carnival (or maybe they WERE the carnival, I don’t remember) and they had another exhibit in the back with all the children they’d had that had died at birth. They were all in big jars of formaldahyde (sp?). Kinda creepy. Maybe the title was ‘Freaks’, I don’t remember nor do I remember the author. Haven’t googled it either as I have to leave again. I’m still going to the bookstore to look for Carson McCullers. The negative critiques of her are just an opinion. Same as for art or movies. There are art critics who have never lifted a brush, yet claim to know a certain artist’s brushstroke, or even what they were thinking, etc. This brings to mind a documentary I saw recently at the Phoenix Art Museum: Who the F*** is Jackson Pollock. A lady, who is the main character in this movie, was there for questions afterwards. Very interesting.
First of all, you are not an idiot.That’s very kind of you. I’m sure I must be, though. I never went to Yale. They purposely ingested various things while producing children so the whole family were, more or less, mutants. This was a very disturbing story for me as I was right in the middle of child bearing years. Anyway, this family was an exhibit at the carnival (or maybe they WERE the carnival, I don’t remember) and they had another exhibit in the back with all the children they’d had that had died at birth.This sounds like the best story ever written. If you do remember the title, I’d be interested. I’ve always wanted to write a story about circus freaks myself. I have some vague ideas on the subject.I’m still going to the bookstore to look for Carson McCullers.So far I’ve read The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and other stories, and am in the middle of reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I think that of these I probably like The Member of the Wedding best, though the actual story The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is also excellent and haunting. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter seems to me looser in construction than those stories, and the prose is not as focused, so it’s taken me slightly longer to get into, but I’m enjoying it very much now. I imagine that I will, before long, have read everything she had published.The negative critiques of her are just an opinion.This is true, but what annoys me is that there appear to be powerful cliques within literature who basically write literary history and decide who is and is not included. Most of the members of these cliques seem to go to the same schools and write the same sort of middle-brow, over-privileged, pseudo-social commentary, writer’s workshop waffle. It’s not so much the fact the people have different opinions to me that rankles, though this is bad enough, it’s the fact that such small-minded and wrong-headed opinions seem to hold sway in the world and make life impossible for people who actually want to do something interesting.
I think The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was in my mother’s collection. The title sounds very familiar. Right after she died, my brother and sister went through her multitude of books and took some without my being there. They were going to dump or donate the rest. I took boxes and boxes home before they could get rid of them. Kept about fifty to 100….never really counted them, then donated the remainder. My home just isn’t big enough for my art AND a library. I’ll let you know what I find at the used bookstore and the title of the carnival people when I find it.I never went to Yale either. In fact, I’m one class from getting a Bachelor’s in Fine Art but I will never take it….not at this state in my life.
The book is called: Geek Lovehttp://www.amazon.ca/Geek-Love-Novel-Katherine-Dunn/dp/0375713344
I think The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was in my mother’s collection. The title sounds very familiar. Right after she died, my brother and sister went through her multitude of books and took some without my being there. They were going to dump or donate the rest. I took boxes and boxes home before they could get rid of them. Kept about fifty to 100….never really counted them, then donated the remainder. My home just isn’t big enough for my art AND a library.Yeah, I’d heard the title The Ballad of the Sad Cafe before I heard the name Carson McCullers, and the same goes for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and it seems like I’m not the only one. I have problems storing books, too.Thanks for the title of the book. It sounds good, and I think I’ll get hold of it some time. I even have a feeling that I heard something about it when it came out. The thing about Yale was kind of a joke (kind of), just because I’ve recently heard that John O’Hara was haunted for his entire life by the fact that he never got into Yale. That’s one of the things that makes me feel that a lot of these writers are inhabiting a very different world to me with different values. The background I grew up in, at the time, hardly any of the kids I went to school with thought about going to university or saw the point in doing so. I remember people who I hung out with saying, “He’s been to university,” as if to denote that ‘he’ belonged to another state of being. Having said that, I suppose I do feel a bit insecure about my lack of education. I feel like my basic education is lacking, and, despite being a writer and reader, I don’t feel at all well-read or knowledgeable. My specialist education (in Japanese language and culture) is not bad.
It took me about an hour to find the name Geek Love on the net. I kept thinking ‘freaks’ so typed that in the search, then tried ‘carnival people’. I came upon the name rather accidentally. There is a book AND a movie called Freaks. The movie stared a few actual freak show people. A couple of them denounced the movie after it came out because they felt humiliated. Those people kept coming up in the searches also and I would get engrossed in reading a few of their stories. Kinda sad really.I also read somewhere that someone, an actor, bought the movie rights to Geek Love. I think my mom saved the article and it is with my mom’s copy of the book. The book is in the possession of my sister. I remember going to a freak show a couple of times at the state fair as a teenager. Upon leaving, I felt very unsettled and wondered if I could go through life having hundreds of people gawk at me because, in their eyes, I was a freak. I have blocked out whatever oddity they had and only remember the looks on their faces.As far as education, you shouldn’t feel insecure. You sound very educated to me. At one point in my life, I was content with just a highschool education and being a housewife and mother. Growing up in the fifties, that was the thing to do. I was married to a supposedly educated man who had a degree in accounting and a masters in business. Yet, this same man, who used to call me a small town hick, never read a book in his life. He would boast about it and, in the next breath, call me dumb for wasting my time sitting to read a book. After ten years of that, I started going to a local community college at age 38. A year or two later, I realized I wasn’t dumb. Personally, I much prefer my education than his. I will say my ex does read….anything and everything to do with the stock market.
Peter A Leonard writes:
“most people, when I mention the name, say, “Who?” Her stories seem to be more famous than she is.”Ah, sure, fame is such a transient thing. Today’s bestseller is tomorrows “Who?” and always will it be so. Who today reads Dawn Powell? This woman who for decades was almost a cult figure, almost a religion, plunged into unthinking obscurity by posterity, yet a great American writer, nonetheless. Or nearer home, our own Julian Maclaren-Ross? Or Patrick Hamilton? Or the great Flann O’Brien, an Irishman with a great sense of humour, a unique vision, and a thirst to match the size of his genius. I could go on and on, but for suffering humanities sake, I won’t.Carson McCullers stories may be more well known because of the celluloid versions (having little in common with the originals) vomited from the great gastric dream factory of Hollywood?“Well, you need say no more, I shall take it up soon after I have put The Heart is a Lonely Fishmonger down.”And on the strength of that, I’ll return and reread (perform?) Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, “The Cruciform”, perhaps forgiving those remarks he made about Tennessee Williams in the process?:jester:
There is a book AND a movie called Freaks. The movie stared a few actual freak show people. A couple of them denounced the movie after it came out because they felt humiliated. Those people kept coming up in the searches also and I would get engrossed in reading a few of their stories. Kinda sad really.Freaks is one of my favourite films. It’s a shame if some of the actors felt exploited. It’s true it wasn’t the most politically correct of storylines, but I had the sense there was a fairytale kind of justice about it. Well, whether good or bad, it’s an utterly unique film. I remember going to a freak show a couple of times at the state fair as a teenager. Upon leaving, I felt very unsettled and wondered if I could go through life having hundreds of people gawk at me because, in their eyes, I was a freak. I have blocked out whatever oddity they had and only remember the looks on their faces.I feel a great deal of, dare I say, empathy, with freaks. I think that any kind of deformity or physical deviation from the norm is a sure way of learning just how despicable the human race is. You’re forced to fall back on the resources of your own inner self. As far as education, you shouldn’t feel insecure. You sound very educated to me. At one point in my life, I was content with just a highschool education and being a housewife and mother. Growing up in the fifties, that was the thing to do. I was married to a supposedly educated man who had a degree in accounting and a masters in business. Yet, this same man, who used to call me a small town hick, never read a book in his life.Well, I think it might be opinions that are the problem. My opinions are not as firm as they might seem. Or are they? I’m not sure. But I think that we’re brought up in the west to believe that we have to have an opinion on everything. We’re even taught at school to debate, to take sides. It’s weird, really. It’s like being taught to argue. Living in Japan, I found that people were more likely just to say, “I don’t know.” Debate is not something that’s especially valued, and people are not generally expected to have opinions. I suppose the kind of opinions I tend to express here are usually born of frustration, and, believe it or not, I express myself in an exaggerated way. But my education really isn’t that good, for what it’s worth. I do try to improve myself, but I’m a late-starter. Education in Britain seems to have been going downhill for a long, long time. I feel sure that education was better in the Nineteenth Century. When Dickens recounts David Copperfield’s knowledge as a child, for instance, he sounds much more educated than any child the same age today, but the myth of progress leads people to assume that we’re getter smarter and smarter. I really feel that in compulsory education we should still be taught Latin, and we should also be taught philosophy from Socrates to Nietzsche and beyond, and we should be taught real history, that gives us an idea of where we came from, instead of the meaningless fragments that I was taught at school about princes in the tower and nonsense like that. There seems to be something of a tradition of those inclined towards business despising literature. It’s something I’ve encountered myself. It’s basically a misogynistic attitude, as literature is seen as feminine. There’s a scene in Peter Greenaway’s film The Pillow Book that sums this up:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph4Df4wB8uAUnfortunately, the subtitles are in Chinese. However, she’s making a list of hateful things, and writes down, “Tedious sportsmen” and “Prejudice against literature”. The clip is ridiculously dark towards the end. It shouldn’t be.Who today reads Dawn Powell? This woman who for decades was almost a cult figure, almost a religion, plunged into unthinking obscurity by posterity, yet a great American writer, nonetheless. Or nearer home, our own Julian Maclaren-Ross? Or Patrick Hamilton? Or the great Flann O’Brien, an Irishman with a great sense of humour, a unique vision, and a thirst to match the size of his genius. I could go on and on, but for suffering humanities sake, I won’t.Of the writers you mention, I have heard of Patrick Hamilton and Flann O’Brien. In fact, they’re both on my list to read. I’ve been meaning to read Hangover Square for a long time. Perhaps you could recommend a good place to start with Flann O’Brien. I shall also have to look up the others. And on the strength of that, I’ll return and reread (perform?) Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, “The Cruciform”, perhaps forgiving those remarks he made about Tennessee Williams in the process?So he bashed McCullers’s friend, too? I didn’t know that. I did prefer ‘The Cruciform’ to ‘The Death of an Avon Lady’, but I feel that, on the whole, his writing lacks yuugen.
Peter A Leonard writes:
“I did prefer ‘The Cruciform’ to ‘The Death of an Avon Lady’, but I feel that, on the whole, his writing lacks yuugen.”Frankly, any writer lacking in yuugen should be locked away in a small room and forced to watch an entire rerun of “Neighbors”. Should they survive this ordeal, they must be dragged dribbling to work for the TLS – as a critic of course 😥 ).”Perhaps you could recommend a good place to start with Flann O’Brien”His political journalism (satire) has been collected in a single edition, and is well worth reading. His best novel is probably “The Third Policeman” although Graham Greene said of “At Swim-Two-Birds” one of the best books of our century. A book in a thousand…Far as I’m concerned everything he wrote was ace.Regards:jester: