Obsession of the day: BOOKFORUM | dec/jan 2005


Michael Gibbons makes me want to be a writer who writes about writers. Anyone who has never attempted it needs to get their hands on a copy of Saurraute's Tropisms and have a go at it. Now. It's beautiful, simple, brilliant, necessary. See? Look here:

"The daring on display in everything she wrote, her cerebral rigor as both novelist and playwright, and the crystalline austerity of her prose style collectively imparted the forbidding aura of a remote, trenchant intelligence"

and this:

"Though she's characteristically vague about the specifics, there's no reason to doubt that she began writing Tropisms under the sway of genuine feeling. But the assurance and nearly Olympian sangfroid of the prose reveal such emotion submitted to a meticulous process of metamorphosis."

Sounds good, right? It is. And it is so different from anything you've ever read before. And it will make you look cool and sound cool, when you can make casual references to your personal affinity for the nouveau roman....which is the most important part, no?

BOOKFORUM | dec/jan 2005
- posted by liz @ 12/15/2004 01:13:00 PM