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A review by casparb
Nightfisherman: Selected Letters: Selected Letters of W.S. Graham by W. S. Graham
5.0
a much needed FULL reread I dip this a lot, but I just felt it was time and go cover to cover. these letters are so so rich. Yes I'm an obsessive of a sort, but I've also read prose before and I think this is a very good prose. & what a complicated troubled masculinity arises
2021:
Okay this was the carefulness I needed at this time so perhaps this will be a long one. Am I predictable?
To get the ordinary nonsense out of the way - it's an excellent collection that chooses to focus on WSG's more poetic letters, whether they be verse or more general musings. This makes sense as I expect that's what just about everybody is most interested in. There are 400 pages of material here so no issues.
Casparism from here: I wasn't aware that he lived down Pengersick lane in the 40s. Conscious that means nothing to just about anybody but it's nice for me. Perhaps Sydney G looked up from his writing desk to see my granddad rumble down the road on his bike. Probably not. It's a fiction I'll allow myself.
Was absolutely delighted by style! So many of these letters are Joycean. I think that's a description with baggage so I must qualify that when somebody describes a piece of writing as stylistically 'Joycean', the image that arrives is a hideous stereotype of impenetrability. Graham is more sensitive than that. There are private letters here that match some of the best of Joyce's natural cadence in Ulysses or Portrait of the Artist as an et cetera. Graham makes a point early on about the use of cliché as a poetic form. I think he's playing on that remarkably too.
I think it was inevitable that I would come to this book eventually, but a big draw for me was learning what WSG read. He doesn't wear his influences on his sleeve like others. I really didn't know what to expect but I am impressed. Of course we have an impressive variety of literary influences - Yeats, Joyce, Burns, Blake, Donne, Hopkins, Rimbaud, Keats, not to mention a pleasant appreciation of Plath and Stevie Smith. There's also a remarkable philosophical background - the mad bastard mentions how much he enjoys (re)reading Hegel.
I know that I'll be coming back to this one for years and years. It's really been popping with inspiration all over the place, made plenty use of already. Here I am speaking out of a hole in my leg. Try To Be Better.
TTBB
2021:
Okay this was the carefulness I needed at this time so perhaps this will be a long one. Am I predictable?
To get the ordinary nonsense out of the way - it's an excellent collection that chooses to focus on WSG's more poetic letters, whether they be verse or more general musings. This makes sense as I expect that's what just about everybody is most interested in. There are 400 pages of material here so no issues.
Casparism from here: I wasn't aware that he lived down Pengersick lane in the 40s. Conscious that means nothing to just about anybody but it's nice for me. Perhaps Sydney G looked up from his writing desk to see my granddad rumble down the road on his bike. Probably not. It's a fiction I'll allow myself.
Was absolutely delighted by style! So many of these letters are Joycean. I think that's a description with baggage so I must qualify that when somebody describes a piece of writing as stylistically 'Joycean', the image that arrives is a hideous stereotype of impenetrability. Graham is more sensitive than that. There are private letters here that match some of the best of Joyce's natural cadence in Ulysses or Portrait of the Artist as an et cetera. Graham makes a point early on about the use of cliché as a poetic form. I think he's playing on that remarkably too.
I think it was inevitable that I would come to this book eventually, but a big draw for me was learning what WSG read. He doesn't wear his influences on his sleeve like others. I really didn't know what to expect but I am impressed. Of course we have an impressive variety of literary influences - Yeats, Joyce, Burns, Blake, Donne, Hopkins, Rimbaud, Keats, not to mention a pleasant appreciation of Plath and Stevie Smith. There's also a remarkable philosophical background - the mad bastard mentions how much he enjoys (re)reading Hegel.
I know that I'll be coming back to this one for years and years. It's really been popping with inspiration all over the place, made plenty use of already. Here I am speaking out of a hole in my leg. Try To Be Better.
TTBB