Literary Oddities Part II

       

         Many writers like to write about their own writing, like to go back endlessly to rewrite something they think needs improving. Henry James was the best example of that, never considering anything he'd written as finished, going back to tinker and tanker with what was there. Many writers also like to write about the writing of other writers, some of whom they admire, but many of whom they don't like.                                                  

          Here are some examples of what writers have said about other writers or the things they’ve written: The Boston Intelligencer called Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, “a heterogeneous mass of bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense.” The Chicago Times said of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” Wow, that sounds much more fitting for our present president. Clifton Fadiman on William Faulkner, “Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.” Nathaniel Hawthorne on women writers, “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.” Whoops, Nathaniel, that wouldn’t go over so well today. James Russell Lowell satirizing Poe, “There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths pure fudge.” Barnaby Rudge was a mystery that Poe admired enough to deduce the solution of the mystery without having read the story. Flannery O’Connor on Southern writers, “In the South there are more amateur authors than there are rivers and streams. . . . In almost every hamlet you’ll find at least one lady writing epics in Negro dialect and probably two or three old gentlemen who have impossible historical novels on the way.” Allen Tate on Emily Dickinson, “Her poetry is a magnificent personal confession, blasphemous and, in its self-revelation, its honesty, almost obscene. It comes out of an intellectual life towards which it feels no moral responsibility. Cotton Mather would have burnt her for a witch.” Twain on himself, “When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.” John Dos Passos on writing as a profession, “If there is a special purgatory for writers, it would be the forced contemplation of their own works.” Robert Frost, “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” And, of course, that time Frost told Sandburg, "Writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net."

           The kitty above wants to purr you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Just listen to him:

"Deck the halls with boughs of catnip.

Here is what I want to say:

Donald, leave the oval office.

That would really make my day." 

Such a smart kitty.