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Another book for my list. I've only read one novel by Marías (wasn't crazy 'about his technique), but will definitely look at this soon. I like his style and attitude, and the anecdotes quoted here. I post it not only because I think it's interesting in general but because some fave authors of forum members are mentioned. My emphasis; bless Sir Arthur 
. - Perdita
An acclaimed Spanish novelist offers quirky portraits of famous writers. - Michael Dirda, WA Post
WRITTEN LIVES by Javier Marías Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions. 200 pp.
It's difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits of Rimbaud, Turgenev, Rilke, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Robert Louis Stevenson, Isak Dinesen, Djuna Barnes and a dozen other literary eminences. "The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors," writes the acclaimed Spanish novelist Javier Marías, "is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals; and although they were probably no more so than anyone else whose life we know about, their example is hardly likely to lure one along the path of letters." That wry sense of amusement characterizes Marías's approach. Though he acknowledges the artistic greatness of his chosen writers, he prefers to point out and relish their personal oddities, all those quirks, eccentricities and obsessions that make them neurotically and sometimes pitiably human.
Occasionally the stories he tells may be familiar, but Marías -- or rather Marías in Margaret Jull Costa's delicious, slyly ironic English -- brings his own light touch to their telling. Henry James, he reminds us, took [umbrage] against Flaubert and Rossetti because they received him in their work smocks: "On the other hand, [James's] enthusiasm for Maupassant knew no bounds, again thanks to a single visit: the French short-story writer had received him for lunch in the society of a lady who was not only naked, but wearing a mask. This struck James as the height of refinement, especially when Maupassant informed him that she was no mere courtesan, prostitute, servant, or actress, but a femme du monde , which James was perfectly happy to believe."
Once Arthur Conan Doyle, who was known to get into fistfights when young and who identified with knights of old, was traveling by train through South Africa: "One of his grown-up sons commented on the ugliness of a woman who happened to walk down the corridor. He had barely had time to finish this sentence when he received a slap and saw, very close to his, the flushed face of his old father, who said very mildly: 'Just remember that no woman is ugly.' "
Throughout, Marías tosses off the sort of facts and turns of phrase that linger in the mind: Kipling's "The Man Who Would be King" was the favorite story of both Faulkner and Proust. "The death of Yukio Mishima was so spectacular that it has almost succeeded in obliterating the many other stupid things he did in his life." Joseph Conrad's "natural state was one of disquiet bordering on anxiety." Violet Hunt, at age 13, offered herself to John Ruskin, later refused a marriage proposal from Oscar Wilde, seduced the homosexual Somerset Maugham, was seduced by H.G. Wells and lived for some years as the putative wife of Ford Madox Ford. Marías reminds us that William Faulkner, who once worked for the University of Mississippi post office, hated to be interrupted in his reading by "any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp." He goes on:
"Perhaps that is where the seeds were first sown of Faulkner's evident aversion to and scorn for letters. When he died, piles of letters, packages and manuscripts sent by admirers were found, none of which he had opened. In fact, the only letters he did open were those from publishers, and then only very cautiously: he would make a tiny slit in the envelope and then shake it to see if a cheque appeared. If it didn't, then the letter would simply join all those other things that can wait forever."
...
According to Marías -- and it's hard to argue with him -- Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano , seems "to have been the most calamitous writer in the whole history of literature." An alcoholic, he was known to drink shaving lotion and his own urine. Shortly after their marriage, his first wife started going off with other men, once climbing onto a bus in Mexico "to spend a jolly week with some engineers." He tried to strangle his second wife. Twice. And he had lots of trouble with animals, once punching a horse in the ear so that it fell to its knees: "Even sadder was what happened to a poor little rabbit that he was absentmindedly stroking on his lap while talking one night to the pet's owner and the owner's mother: the rabbit suddenly went stiff; Lowry had broken its neck with his small, clumsy hands. For two days, he wandered the streets of London carrying the corpse, not knowing what to do with it and consumed by self-loathing."
...
Though he envies the cheerful humanity of Laurence Sterne, the character that Marías most obviously adores is the caustic, illusionless Madame du Deffand, best known today as one of the world's great letter writers, her correspondents including Voltaire and, above all, Horace Walpole. "In both youth and maturity," writes Marías, she "had known no weak passions, only overwhelming ones." He tantalizes with accounts of her early life: "During her youth, having already been married and almost immediately separated ('Feeling no love at all for one's husband is a fairly widespread misfortune'), she had taken part in a number of orgies, to which she had doubtless been introduced by her first lover, the regent Philippe d'Orléans."
Madame du Deffand's wit is still celebrated in France. When a priest marveled at the miracle of St. Denis, who had managed to walk after his beheading all the way from Montmartre to the church that now bears his name, she answered: "The distance does not matter, it is only the first step that is difficult." She once forthrightly announced, "I find everyone loathsome."
...
As I say, this is a delightful volume. Marías closes it with a longish piece about his collection of portrait postcards of writers, meditating on what the various images mean to him: The young Gide, he concludes, looks like "a professional duellist"; T.S. Eliot like "a man who has spent decades combing his hair in exactly the same way. full article
. - PerditaAn acclaimed Spanish novelist offers quirky portraits of famous writers. - Michael Dirda, WA Post
WRITTEN LIVES by Javier Marías Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions. 200 pp.
It's difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits of Rimbaud, Turgenev, Rilke, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Robert Louis Stevenson, Isak Dinesen, Djuna Barnes and a dozen other literary eminences. "The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors," writes the acclaimed Spanish novelist Javier Marías, "is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals; and although they were probably no more so than anyone else whose life we know about, their example is hardly likely to lure one along the path of letters." That wry sense of amusement characterizes Marías's approach. Though he acknowledges the artistic greatness of his chosen writers, he prefers to point out and relish their personal oddities, all those quirks, eccentricities and obsessions that make them neurotically and sometimes pitiably human.
Occasionally the stories he tells may be familiar, but Marías -- or rather Marías in Margaret Jull Costa's delicious, slyly ironic English -- brings his own light touch to their telling. Henry James, he reminds us, took [umbrage] against Flaubert and Rossetti because they received him in their work smocks: "On the other hand, [James's] enthusiasm for Maupassant knew no bounds, again thanks to a single visit: the French short-story writer had received him for lunch in the society of a lady who was not only naked, but wearing a mask. This struck James as the height of refinement, especially when Maupassant informed him that she was no mere courtesan, prostitute, servant, or actress, but a femme du monde , which James was perfectly happy to believe."
Once Arthur Conan Doyle, who was known to get into fistfights when young and who identified with knights of old, was traveling by train through South Africa: "One of his grown-up sons commented on the ugliness of a woman who happened to walk down the corridor. He had barely had time to finish this sentence when he received a slap and saw, very close to his, the flushed face of his old father, who said very mildly: 'Just remember that no woman is ugly.' "
Throughout, Marías tosses off the sort of facts and turns of phrase that linger in the mind: Kipling's "The Man Who Would be King" was the favorite story of both Faulkner and Proust. "The death of Yukio Mishima was so spectacular that it has almost succeeded in obliterating the many other stupid things he did in his life." Joseph Conrad's "natural state was one of disquiet bordering on anxiety." Violet Hunt, at age 13, offered herself to John Ruskin, later refused a marriage proposal from Oscar Wilde, seduced the homosexual Somerset Maugham, was seduced by H.G. Wells and lived for some years as the putative wife of Ford Madox Ford. Marías reminds us that William Faulkner, who once worked for the University of Mississippi post office, hated to be interrupted in his reading by "any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp." He goes on:
"Perhaps that is where the seeds were first sown of Faulkner's evident aversion to and scorn for letters. When he died, piles of letters, packages and manuscripts sent by admirers were found, none of which he had opened. In fact, the only letters he did open were those from publishers, and then only very cautiously: he would make a tiny slit in the envelope and then shake it to see if a cheque appeared. If it didn't, then the letter would simply join all those other things that can wait forever."
...
According to Marías -- and it's hard to argue with him -- Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano , seems "to have been the most calamitous writer in the whole history of literature." An alcoholic, he was known to drink shaving lotion and his own urine. Shortly after their marriage, his first wife started going off with other men, once climbing onto a bus in Mexico "to spend a jolly week with some engineers." He tried to strangle his second wife. Twice. And he had lots of trouble with animals, once punching a horse in the ear so that it fell to its knees: "Even sadder was what happened to a poor little rabbit that he was absentmindedly stroking on his lap while talking one night to the pet's owner and the owner's mother: the rabbit suddenly went stiff; Lowry had broken its neck with his small, clumsy hands. For two days, he wandered the streets of London carrying the corpse, not knowing what to do with it and consumed by self-loathing."
...
Though he envies the cheerful humanity of Laurence Sterne, the character that Marías most obviously adores is the caustic, illusionless Madame du Deffand, best known today as one of the world's great letter writers, her correspondents including Voltaire and, above all, Horace Walpole. "In both youth and maturity," writes Marías, she "had known no weak passions, only overwhelming ones." He tantalizes with accounts of her early life: "During her youth, having already been married and almost immediately separated ('Feeling no love at all for one's husband is a fairly widespread misfortune'), she had taken part in a number of orgies, to which she had doubtless been introduced by her first lover, the regent Philippe d'Orléans."
Madame du Deffand's wit is still celebrated in France. When a priest marveled at the miracle of St. Denis, who had managed to walk after his beheading all the way from Montmartre to the church that now bears his name, she answered: "The distance does not matter, it is only the first step that is difficult." She once forthrightly announced, "I find everyone loathsome."
...
As I say, this is a delightful volume. Marías closes it with a longish piece about his collection of portrait postcards of writers, meditating on what the various images mean to him: The young Gide, he concludes, looks like "a professional duellist"; T.S. Eliot like "a man who has spent decades combing his hair in exactly the same way. full article
