Happy 90th Mr. Bradbury
August 22, 2010, Mr. Bradbury celebrates his 90th birthday. He and P.D. James, I believe now are chief members of this very exclusive club of nonagerian writers.
Structures--Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf was well known to have little patience with Ulysses. Joyce Carol Oates, in her book The Faith of a Writer suggests that part of this may have been the jealousy of one genius admiring the aplomb and power of another. Following is a quotation from Virginia Woolf's diary available from Fathom.
"I have read 200 pages [of Ulysses] so far," Virginia Woolf writes in her diary for 16 August 1922, and reports that she has been "amused, stimulated, charmed[,] interested ... to the end of the Cemetery scene." As "Hades" gives way to "Aeolus," however, and the novel of character and private sensibility yields to a farrago of styles, she is "puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned"--by no grand master of language, in her characterization, but "by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples." No artifact of elite difficulty, Ulysses becomes for Woolf the "illiterate, underbred book ... of a self taught wor…
"I have read 200 pages [of Ulysses] so far," Virginia Woolf writes in her diary for 16 August 1922, and reports that she has been "amused, stimulated, charmed[,] interested ... to the end of the Cemetery scene." As "Hades" gives way to "Aeolus," however, and the novel of character and private sensibility yields to a farrago of styles, she is "puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned"--by no grand master of language, in her characterization, but "by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples." No artifact of elite difficulty, Ulysses becomes for Woolf the "illiterate, underbred book ... of a self taught wor…
Steven,
ReplyDeleteAnd both are still writing, although in a recent interview, PD James suggested that she might not write another novel. It depends on her health, and she won't start another unless she thinks she will be able to finish it.
Got me! I clicked to see what someone had posted about Bradbury. [g]
Another of my favorite writers, Russell Hoban, just turned 85 this year, so he's still got five years to go before he's eligible for a very exclusive club.