Wanted to put this down:
Chatwin's elusiveness about his sexuality appears to have had an impact on his writing style as well. As The London Sunday Times Books noted, "his polished prose subtly distanced him; yet their blend of intellectual passion and emotional coldness, the postmodern glitter of surface and patchwork, shorn of all authorial judgment, provoked widespread curiosity about his life."
The writer Salman Rushdie, a loyal friend, described Chatwin's complex sexuality as "the creature at the perimeter prowling around. All this fantastic entertainment and language and originality and erudition and display [was] a kind of hedge against not letting out the truth."
One way of looking at things.
Bad English is my birthright
5 comments:
'not letting out the truth' indeed! hmph! and pray, what r his readers like -- multifaceted addleheads?
can't really get angry with rushdie, though.
most of all, i can't believe chatwin thought he was writing for idiots, that's all.
that's the trouble, see, that it's rushdie, who said you have a choice of not having athng to do with him, or of falling in love with him. and then admits to having done the latter.
it's also this. once a writer is out there, getting published and read etc., he will become subject to such analysis. there your righteous anger will fall into the same category of those other knowledgeabl friends. both they and you(us) claim to 'understand' what he's writing, and by extension, what he's about. shekhan theke, all are value judgements, and therefore, self-defeating.
i think this whole thing about biographical analysis is extremely fraught. and yet one would find it difficult not to be led into it if one were to fall in love with the writing.
in this, bruce would not be a valid commentator either, were he to decide to 'explain' stuff (which he might or might not care to). once its out there, the book is so much a product. you can't judge the quality of the debate it provokes. the book has done some of its job if it provokes one in the first place. where do you draw the line, i wonder. cuz at some point judgement will step in. since there is such a thing as critical anarchy to which you would like to have checks and balances
hm. must say i don't think we were talking claims.
as for the rest, sounds like a literary criticism thingummy. eyes glossed over by the time i came to the end of it, and all that...
don't feel like responding
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