This rehashes the chapter from Stet. I can’t read it now without hearing Diana’s cut-glass accent. I don’t think she was wrong to criticise Guerrillas - not least because she was right about its central problem. Naipaul didn’t fully understand the events he used as the template. The rage he works himself up into - which disfigures the book’s second half - seems more wrong-headed than usual. The companion piece he wrote about the Michael X murders has the same problem.
Surely, if an editor has one job, it's pointing out to great writers when they've turned out a real stinker (which the best of them do on occasion). If only editors were less reverent and more firm with literary greats, they might save them the embarrassment of publishing bad, silly books.
Garrulous old biddy. The downside of literary fandom. The afterword she wrote for Alfred Chester's "Exquisite Corpse" makes the reader feel like a ghoul because he died so young. And she admits that she could have done more for him when he needed it but "the affection wasn't there". I guess Alfred could be hard to like. Anyway, I got three more books by him and about his demise. Decided I might as well enjoy the full corpse meal. He was a Punk rock rebel 20 years before Punk. "Literature is shit!"
This rehashes the chapter from Stet. I can’t read it now without hearing Diana’s cut-glass accent.
I don’t think she was wrong to criticise Guerrillas - not least because she was right about its central problem. Naipaul didn’t fully understand the events he used as the template. The rage he works himself up into - which disfigures the book’s second half - seems more wrong-headed than usual. The companion piece he wrote about the Michael X murders has the same problem.
Surely, if an editor has one job, it's pointing out to great writers when they've turned out a real stinker (which the best of them do on occasion). If only editors were less reverent and more firm with literary greats, they might save them the embarrassment of publishing bad, silly books.
It wasn’t a stinker, however.
Garrulous old biddy. The downside of literary fandom. The afterword she wrote for Alfred Chester's "Exquisite Corpse" makes the reader feel like a ghoul because he died so young. And she admits that she could have done more for him when he needed it but "the affection wasn't there". I guess Alfred could be hard to like. Anyway, I got three more books by him and about his demise. Decided I might as well enjoy the full corpse meal. He was a Punk rock rebel 20 years before Punk. "Literature is shit!"