Revolution
Language
In the April 8 issue of the The New York Review of Books Charles Rosen writes about Hugo von Hofmannsthal: “As for Hofmannsthal, who fully understood the roots of the stylistic revolution of his time, but remained aloof after a few tentative moves, Walter Benjamin remarked about him soon after his death: ‘Hofmannsthal turned his back upon the task which emerges in his Lord Chandos letter. His “loss of speech” was a kind of punishment for this. Perhaps the language that escaped Hofmannsthal was the very language that was given to Kafka around the same time. For Kafka took on the task which Hofmannsthal had failed morally, and therefore also poetically, to fulfill.’”
It can be a relief for an author and for his audience to believe that the author's moral obligations are equal to his poetic obligations.
After all, we very much want a good writer to be a good human being.
But?
But?(with kind greetings from James Ensor)
what do you believe , arnon?
Arnon
There is also a discussion about Dickens. What does it matter? Do you like or dislike the writing? After the book there is history, a genre of its own. That story can be a problem for people who want to believe a writer's story exactly. I dont have problems with your work when history proves that you never travelled and were a nympho especially when it comes to foreplay.I could be mad at you when my girlfriend said there was only some lousy foreplay and nothing else when she was with you and history proves her and your story wrong, but thats not the case i guess.
Simon Nak
To me it seems people always judge way to soon; and of course it doesn't matter really if a writer is a good person or not, as long as people feel affection with his writing.One can take The Most Evil Person in history (who also considered himself a good writer): Adolf Hitler, and simply state that all he did in retrospective was make people happy: at first his parents when he was born, than the German people when he was elected their leader, and finally the whole world, when he died.
Simon
How many brilliant novels have we overlooked exactly?Kevino Class
Lately I've been wondering about this 'tradition' that you should speak of the dead either in their favour or not speak at all. I asked myself: what about Hitler? Well, your's the way to talk :)And as to the authors: I prefer the badass ones... like Miller.
Arnon
I did not necessarily mean that 'we' as a society overlook large numbers of evil, but talented, writers.I mean that for instance my mother doesn't like the work of W.F. Hermans because she thinks he was an awful person. It might be that more people don't read books written by people they don't like as a person. To make it personal, perhaps there are people who will never read Tirza because they don't like the person Arnon Grunberg.
