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Review
"Javier Marias is such an elegant, witty and persuasive writer that it is tempting simply to quote him at length" The Scotsman "Brief, playful, charming and insightful." Metro "...sprightly and entertaining...these essays are often as evocative of their subjects and as full of illuminating little nuggets of information as a well-written obituary." TLS"
Product Description
This is a playful glimpse into the personalities of twenty-five of the most significant writers of the last one hundred and fifty years. Inspired to revisit the lives of some of the world's most eminent writers of all time, looking at them from the angle of some peculiar detail of their lives, Javier Marias provides a lively and illuminating insight into personalities we thought we knew everything about. Told with affection and humour, these brief 'written lives' throw a refreshing, and very human, light on authors too-often enshrined, or entombed, within the halo of artistic sainthood.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
"The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals."
16 July 2007
Format:Hardcover
Illustrating this collection of anecdotes about twenty world-famous authors with startling photographs, Javier Marias, one of Spain's most respected contemporary authors, presents individual mini-bios as if they were short stories, "enhancing" some details (though all details are said to be true) and minimizing others. He brings literature's icons to life, showing them with all their warts and blemishes, and though some of these tales have the feel of secret histories, Marias writes with humor, not with bile--and in most cases with actual affection, the three exceptions being James Joyce, Thomas Mann, and Yukio Mishima.
Marias's choice of authors is arbitrary. They come from all over the world and reflect a variety of time periods. Lawrence Sterne exists side-by-side with Yukio Mishima and Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad with William Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, Malcolm Lowry with Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. Here one finds memorable tidbits such as the following from among hundreds of such tidbits:
William Faulkner was fired from working at the University of Mississippi post office because he hated having his reading interrupted: "He told his family that he was not prepared to keep getting up to wait on people at the window and having to be beholden to any SOB who had two cents to buy a stamp." James Joyce was so egotistical that he once asked, "Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the Mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?"
Henry James's "linguistic punctiliousness" was so great that "the simplest question addressed to a servant would take a minimum of three minutes to formulate." Robert Louis Stevenson was fascinated by evil, associating with Chantrelle, a multiple murderer, whom he considered a friend. Ivan Turgenev's grandmother murdered an annoying young servant, his mother drowned all the babies of the serfs on their estate so that their parents would not neglect their duties. Malcolm Lowry, described as "drunk, drunk, drunk," once told about seeing elephants in the street, a hallucination so ridiculous that his friends would not believe him, even when presented with the steaming evidence on the sidewalk.
A fascinating accumulation of oddities about revered authors, this collection is vibrant in its depictions of their personalities and perceptive in its assessments of how these authors came to be the people they were. Lovers of literary fiction and students of world literature will be delighted by this treasure trove of lesser known facts about the Great Ones. Mary Whipple
Marias's choice of authors is arbitrary. They come from all over the world and reflect a variety of time periods. Lawrence Sterne exists side-by-side with Yukio Mishima and Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad with William Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, Malcolm Lowry with Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. Here one finds memorable tidbits such as the following from among hundreds of such tidbits:
William Faulkner was fired from working at the University of Mississippi post office because he hated having his reading interrupted: "He told his family that he was not prepared to keep getting up to wait on people at the window and having to be beholden to any SOB who had two cents to buy a stamp." James Joyce was so egotistical that he once asked, "Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the Mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?"
Henry James's "linguistic punctiliousness" was so great that "the simplest question addressed to a servant would take a minimum of three minutes to formulate." Robert Louis Stevenson was fascinated by evil, associating with Chantrelle, a multiple murderer, whom he considered a friend. Ivan Turgenev's grandmother murdered an annoying young servant, his mother drowned all the babies of the serfs on their estate so that their parents would not neglect their duties. Malcolm Lowry, described as "drunk, drunk, drunk," once told about seeing elephants in the street, a hallucination so ridiculous that his friends would not believe him, even when presented with the steaming evidence on the sidewalk.
A fascinating accumulation of oddities about revered authors, this collection is vibrant in its depictions of their personalities and perceptive in its assessments of how these authors came to be the people they were. Lovers of literary fiction and students of world literature will be delighted by this treasure trove of lesser known facts about the Great Ones. Mary Whipple
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Master of Gossip
4 Mar 2006
Format:Hardcover
Gossip has had a bad rap: it has been made out to be an inferior order of communication, petty and vindictive, underhanded even; the word itself, with its double s's hanging in the middle like empty meat hooks ready for the next flesh to skewer and expose, suggests aggressive intentions; yet as a devotee of gossip I am sure that nothing is further from the truth: ah, truth, the essence of gossip; anything less is slander, or lies, or libel, or plain maliciousness. Gossip is about truths that people would prefer to keep hidden precisely because it may render and reveal the true image that exists behind the phony coverings. Gossip can be, and often is, the magic key that opens a person's soul for all to view. It is anti-spin material and, at its best, it yields, in shorthand, exquisite revelations about a person's character.
Javier Marias's WRITTEN LIVES is superbly gossipy. Its subject is a group of 20 writers chosen by the author in a manner "entirely arbitrary." This (arbitrariness) adds an additional layer of variety and surprise to the list, which includes Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Henry James, Nabokov, Lowry and Kipling. Or, more precisely, three Americans, three Irish, two English, two Scottish, two Russian, two French, one Polish (Conrad), and one each from Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany and Japan. Absent are any from the author's own country of Spain, an absence extensively and obscurely explained by the author in his prologue. The type of gossip profusely seeded throughout the book cannot be easily tabulated, but includes (of course) sexuality and perversity, bowel activity, wit, suicide and other aggressive acts, drunkenness, travel, and an assortment of peculiarities of mind, soul, habits, and body, as well as death itself. The exact date, and sometimes the manner of death, form part of this tableau of little anecdotes.
Javier Marias, himself a perennial candidate for Nobelizing (or so gossipy Spaniards believe), is a master of subtlety and indirection; and while he would never reveal his intense regard for Nabokov, he remembers the event of his death not unlike those who experienced the news of Pearl Harbor, or of Kennedy's assassination, or of Nine Eleven: "...I learned about his death in Calle Sierpes in Seville, when I opened the newspaper as I was having breakfast in the Laredo." He has an obvious fondness for most (but not for all) the writers he gossips about.
WRITTEN LIVES will delight and amuse anyone with a fondness for writers, books, and the creation of literature.
Javier Marias's WRITTEN LIVES is superbly gossipy. Its subject is a group of 20 writers chosen by the author in a manner "entirely arbitrary." This (arbitrariness) adds an additional layer of variety and surprise to the list, which includes Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Henry James, Nabokov, Lowry and Kipling. Or, more precisely, three Americans, three Irish, two English, two Scottish, two Russian, two French, one Polish (Conrad), and one each from Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany and Japan. Absent are any from the author's own country of Spain, an absence extensively and obscurely explained by the author in his prologue. The type of gossip profusely seeded throughout the book cannot be easily tabulated, but includes (of course) sexuality and perversity, bowel activity, wit, suicide and other aggressive acts, drunkenness, travel, and an assortment of peculiarities of mind, soul, habits, and body, as well as death itself. The exact date, and sometimes the manner of death, form part of this tableau of little anecdotes.
Javier Marias, himself a perennial candidate for Nobelizing (or so gossipy Spaniards believe), is a master of subtlety and indirection; and while he would never reveal his intense regard for Nabokov, he remembers the event of his death not unlike those who experienced the news of Pearl Harbor, or of Kennedy's assassination, or of Nine Eleven: "...I learned about his death in Calle Sierpes in Seville, when I opened the newspaper as I was having breakfast in the Laredo." He has an obvious fondness for most (but not for all) the writers he gossips about.
WRITTEN LIVES will delight and amuse anyone with a fondness for writers, books, and the creation of literature.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
"The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals."--J. Marias
16 July 2007
Format:Paperback
Illustrating this collection of anecdotes about twenty world-famous authors with startling photographs, Javier Marias, one of Spain's most respected contemporary authors, presents individual mini-bios as if they were short stories, "enhancing" some details (though all details are said to be true) and minimizing others. He brings literature's icons to life, showing them with all their warts and blemishes, and though some of these tales have the feel of secret histories, Marias writes with humor, not with bile--and in most cases with actual affection, the three exceptions being James Joyce, Thomas Mann, and Yukio Mishima.
Marias's choice of authors is arbitrary. They come from all over the world and reflect a variety of time periods. Lawrence Sterne exists side-by-side with Yukio Mishima and Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad with William Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, Malcolm Lowry with Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. Here one finds memorable tidbits such as the following from among hundreds of such tidbits:
William Faulkner was fired from working at the University of Mississippi post office because he hated having his reading interrupted: "He told his family that he was not prepared to keep getting up to wait on people at the window and having to be beholden to any SOB who had two cents to buy a stamp." James Joyce was so egotistical that he once asked, "Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the Mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?"
Henry James's "linguistic punctiliousness" was so great that "the simplest question addressed to a servant would take a minimum of three minutes to formulate." Robert Louis Stevenson was fascinated by evil, associating with Chantrelle, a multiple murderer, whom he considered a friend. Ivan Turgenev's grandmother murdered an annoying young servant, and his mother drowned all the babies of the serfs on their estate so that their parents would not neglect their duties. Malcolm Lowry, described as "drunk, drunk, drunk," once told about seeing elephants in the street, a hallucination so ridiculous that his friends would not believe him, even when presented with the steaming evidence on the sidewalk.
A fascinating accumulation of oddities about revered authors, this collection is vibrant in its depictions of their personalities and perceptive in its assessments of how these authors came to be the people they were. Lovers of literary fiction and students of world literature will be delighted by this treasure trove of lesser known facts about the Great Ones. n Mary Whipple
Marias's choice of authors is arbitrary. They come from all over the world and reflect a variety of time periods. Lawrence Sterne exists side-by-side with Yukio Mishima and Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad with William Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, Malcolm Lowry with Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. Here one finds memorable tidbits such as the following from among hundreds of such tidbits:
William Faulkner was fired from working at the University of Mississippi post office because he hated having his reading interrupted: "He told his family that he was not prepared to keep getting up to wait on people at the window and having to be beholden to any SOB who had two cents to buy a stamp." James Joyce was so egotistical that he once asked, "Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the Mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?"
Henry James's "linguistic punctiliousness" was so great that "the simplest question addressed to a servant would take a minimum of three minutes to formulate." Robert Louis Stevenson was fascinated by evil, associating with Chantrelle, a multiple murderer, whom he considered a friend. Ivan Turgenev's grandmother murdered an annoying young servant, and his mother drowned all the babies of the serfs on their estate so that their parents would not neglect their duties. Malcolm Lowry, described as "drunk, drunk, drunk," once told about seeing elephants in the street, a hallucination so ridiculous that his friends would not believe him, even when presented with the steaming evidence on the sidewalk.
A fascinating accumulation of oddities about revered authors, this collection is vibrant in its depictions of their personalities and perceptive in its assessments of how these authors came to be the people they were. Lovers of literary fiction and students of world literature will be delighted by this treasure trove of lesser known facts about the Great Ones. n Mary Whipple
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Brightness Falls
8 Feb 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A marvelous series of biographical vignettes on famous writers, each a meticulously crafted essay. These short pieces (most only several pages long) encapsulate a personality far more than it tries to evaluate an entire oeuvre. But in doing so, the reader is privy to a beam of light, briefly but brilliantly illuminating what was once merely a name. As the reader turns the pages, joy piles upon joy and one is left delighted to have spent time in the company of a writer who is both entertaining and enlightening.
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