Written Lives (NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK) - Softcover

Marías, Javier; Costa, Margaret Jull

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811216896 ISBN 13: 9780811216890

Publisher: New Directions, 2007

Synopsis

Written Lives An affectionate and very funny gallery of twenty great world authors from the pen of "the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature" (The Boston Globe). Full description

About this title

Review:

A great writer.--Salman Rushdie

His prose demonstrates an unusual blend of sophistication and accessibility.--Wyatt Mason

It is difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits...Delicious, slyly ironic.... A delightful volume.--Michael Dirda

Reading these portraits is addictive; one keeps turning pages in anticipation of Marías' keen and amusing analyses.

They may be miniatures, but they're curious, addictive, and profound in their brevity.... The next thing Marías deserves is the Nobel Prize.

I am greatly impressed by the quality of Marías's writing.--W. G. Sebald

Javier Marías is in my opinion one of the best contemporary writers.--J. M. Coetzee

Mini-biographies of classic authors like Nabokov, Wilde, Rimbaud, Faulkner and Brontë written from the point of view of everything that went wrong in their lives. But funny! A must-read for any bibliophile.--Caroline Stanley

From the Back Cover:

EMILY BRONTË, THOMAS MANN, JAMES JOYCE, IVAN TURGENEV, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, ARTHUR RIMBAUD, JOSEPH CONRAD, RAINER MARIA RILKE, HENRY JAMES, WILLIAM FAULKNER . . .

Told with a mixture of affection and humour, these brief 'written lives' throw an unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined, or entombed, in the halo of artistic sainthood. Here, Javier Marías ingeniously revisits the lives and personalities of twenty authors, humanising them and in the process bringing them alive.

'[Marías is] one of the best contemporary European writers.'
JM Coetzee

'Brief, playful, charming and insightful.'
Alan Chadwick, Metro

'Sprightly and entertaining . . . Literary scholars will no doubt frown upon this sort of carry-on, but these essays are often as evocative of their subjects and as full of illuminating little nuggets of information as a well-written obituary.'
Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement

'An artful antidote to the "exhaustive and futile erudition" of biography . . . Mann, Mishima, Joyce and Rilke get short, damning shrift. Marías sups from the marrow of their bones with a very long spoon.'
Iain Finlayson, The Times

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
Cover illustrations © André Carrilho
Cover design by James Hutcheson

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0811216896
• ISBN 13: 9780811216890
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208