Quote On friends Biography
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About biography, Lytton Strachey once wrote, “We do not reflect that it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as it is to live one.” In our own time, Leon Edel—a literary biographer for over fifty years—is the most notable practitioner of his craft.
When the prospect of an interview on the art of biography first came up, so did the issue of geography. Quite simply, Edel was in Honolulu, the interviewer, New York. With characteristic generosity, Edel offered a solution. “Will you come to Honolulu?” he wrote, “an ocean and a continent away? You are welcome to conduct the sessions here in my study on a hilltop overlooking the city, a fine green place with an intrusive sleek cat, plumeria trees, cooing doves and general quiet.” Tempting as it was, the meeting in Hawaii was preempted by the Edels’ visit to New York in the spring of 1985. This interview was conducted in their room at the Westbury Hotel during two consecutive mornings in mid-May. Now in his seventies, Leon Edel is a small man with a soft voice and a ready smile. We sat in armchairs by the window of his hotel room, with a tape recorder on a glass tabletop between us. Often, to stress a point, Edel would lean in toward the machine and raise his voice slightly to be sure he was heard over the rumblings of traffic on Madison Avenue. At other times, Edel would quote long passages by memory, then double-check the quotation in one of the many books or notepads piled neatly beside him. A seasoned biographer, Edel is well aware of the importance of accuracy, yet his assiduous checking proved to be mere formality. He invariably got each quotation right, word for word, a feat he noted with a broad smile and a slight twinkle in his eyes. After our last session together, the Edels took me to a celebratory lunch, where we discussed everything from Marjorie’s work—she has recently written the biography of a Hawaiian princess—to Edmund Wilson’s sex life, and shared the first wild strawberries of the season.That’s indeed a complex history. It began when I was a student of eighteen. And it started with James Joyce, not Henry James. In 1926, I heard stories about Joyce’s banned book Ulysses and what an oppressed author he was; nobody wanted to publish him. I sympathized; I explored. I finally got a smuggled copy. For a youth of eighteen the prose was dazzling. I thought of Joyce as a kind of Paganini of prose: a trickster who carried all English literature in his head. I was fascinated by the way Joyce tried to put the reader into the minds of his characters—that long soliloquy of Molly Bloom’s, the way Joyce flitted from Bloom’s thoughts into street smells and street incidents and then back into the stream of consciousness. Great stuff! Did I fall in love with Joyce? No, he wasn’t lovable. But he was a great performer and youth likes performance. So I went to my favorite professor and announced I would write a dissertation on the “stream of consciousness” in Joyce. “Impossible,” said the professor. Joyce was forty. His book wasn’t available. There were only some poems, Dubliners, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And anyhow, he was alive; at that time you wrote dissertations only on the dead, whose work was complete That’s indeed a complex history. It began when I was a student of eighteen. And it started with James Joyce, not Henry James. In 1926, I heard stories about Joyce’s banned book Ulysses and what an oppressed author he was; nobody wanted to publish him. I sympathized; I explored. I finally got a smuggled copy. For a youth of eighteen the prose was dazzling. I thought of Joyce as a kind of Paganini of prose: a trickster who carried all English literature in his head. I was fascinated by the way Joyce tried to put the reader into the minds of his characters—that long soliloquy of Molly Bloom’s, the way Joyce flitted from Bloom’s thoughts into street smells and street incidents and then back into the stream of consciousness. Great stuff! Did I fall in love with Joyce? No, he wasn’t lovable. But he was a great performer and youth likes performance. So I went to my favorite professor and announced I would write a dissertation on the “stream of consciousness” in Joyce. “Impossible,” said the professor. Joyce was forty. His book wasn’t available. There were only some poems, Dubliners, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And anyhow, he was alive; at that time you wrote dissertations only on the dead, whose work was complete
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Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
Quote On friends Tumblr Taglog Forever Leaving Being Fake Changeing With benefits and family leting Your Down Hurting You
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