J.G. Farrell in His Own Words : Selected Letters and Diaries

Lavinia Greacen

ISBN 10: 1859184286 / ISBN 13: 9781859184288

Published by Cork University Press Dez 2009, 2009

About this Item

Neuware - The novelist J.G. Farrell known to his friends as Jim was drowned on August 11, 1979 when he was swept off rocks by a sudden storm while fishing in the West of Ireland. He was in his early forties. Had he not sadly died so young, remarked Salman Rushdie in 2008, there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language. The three novels that he did leave are all in their different way extraordinary.

Seller Inventory # 9781859184288

Bibliographic Details

• Title: J.G. Farrell in His Own Words : Selected Letters and Diaries
• Publisher: Cork University Press Dez 2009
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859184286
• ISBN 13: 9781859184288
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 236W x 157H x 43D millimeters 236 millimeters width by 157 millimeters height by 43 millimeters depth
• Weight: 885 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The novelist J.G. Farrell - known to his friends as Jim - was drowned on August 11 1979 when he was swept off rocks by a sudden storm while fishing in the West of Ireland. He was in his early forties. Had he lived to write more, assessed the "Daily Telegraph" obituary at the time, 'he might well have been regarded as the greatest historical novelist of his generation'. Thirty years on, with a new and younger readership, that accolade rings true. "The Siege of Krishnapur", the second of Farrell's "Empire Trilogy", won the Booker Prize in 1973, and it was selected as one of only six previous winners to compete in the 2008 international 'Best of Booker' competition. The strength of American interest in Farrell's books is underlined by the inclusion of all three Trilogy novels in the Classics imprint of the "New York Review of Books". Many of these collected letters are written to women whom Jim Farrell loved and whom he inadvertently hurt. His ambition to be a great writer in an age of minimal author's earnings ruled out the expense of marriage and fatherhood, because for an unconventional novelist he had remarkably conventional standards. Self-sufficiency was his answer. Books Ireland has astutely portrayed him as 'a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a man who wanted solitude and yet did not want it, wanted love but feared commitment, reached out again and again but, possibly through fear of rejection, was always the first to cut the cord'. But Farrell's kindness, deft humour and gift for friendship reached across rejection, which must account for why so many such letters were kept. Funny, teasing, anxious and ambitious, these previously unpublished letters give the reader a glimpse of this private man.

About the Author

Lavinia Greacen is author of Chink (Macmillan, 1990) and J.G. Farrell, the Making of a Writer (Bloomsbury, 1999)