In the better late than never category, I nominate The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne. Another wonderful British writer rendered beautifully by Byrne.
I'm terribly late to the party on this one, but I so adore Dodie Smith and ‘I Capture The Castle’. It is the one book I give to every writing student who is trying to find her voice. I love how it opens with Cassandra in the sink of this freezing old pile just trying to have a bath--never mind the beautiful stable boy Stephen's ill-conceived, but well-intentioned plagiarizing of poems to win her heart. And then there's the ultimate scheme of getting old man Mortmain to write again by locking him in the tower! It's exactly what my girls and I would have done to my ex-husband to get him to work 😂 But all this time, I hadn't a clue about Ms. Smith's plays... Cannot wait to read Grove's bio and dig up all I've missed. Thanks ever so for this!
'The Wavemaker Falters' by George Saunders because it's short and shows that for a story to really work... 'the heart must always be in conflict with itself', but then at the other end of the spectrum, Dashiell Hammett and his hard boiled vernacular. It builds a whole world.
I love this piece so much! You blended fiction (I assume gun-toting-genre-bully is fiction and your family is safe) and non fiction so well.
Shot In The Heart is one of my favorite books and Mikal is a good friend. I would love to forward this to him. Is it possible to fix the typo on his name? (Mikal not Mika.)
Delighted to hear you're a biography fan! If you're looking for your next great read, can I blatantly plug my Literature for the People, published last week? Did you know Macmillan Publishing was founded by two poorly educated sons of an Arran crofter, and they did it because they believed the working classes needed access to better, cheaper books? And within 2 generations you get Prime Minister Harold? It's quite a tale.
I actually am that person with the gun. I threaten people in that fashion regularly. It’s a completely normal thing to do with such time on your hands and such an insatiable desire to cause anxiety in others (stemming from a childhood accident involving a bag of marbles that left me irreparably mentally scarred - but I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?).
Though, you were mistaken. For I am woman, and this is how you will hear me roar.
Great suggestions, Nick, and I am in full agreement with you about biography as a top-notch, but strangely overlooked, genre. It's hard to beat Claire Tomalin, who first got me hooked, and let's hope that Hermione Lee's Anita Brookner comes out soon.
Thank you so much for recommending Dodie Smith, and for the list of biographies you include at the top of your piece. I'm sure you've already read it, Nick, but for anyone perusing the comments - 'Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story' by Nick Tosches is also a fantastic read.
I love biographies and I love Dodie Smith, so this post was pure pleasure to read. For anyone who is interested in Dodie Smith’s life, I recommend Slightly Foxed’s podcast dedicated to her life and works (they’ve published her memoirs).
Dear Octopus, recently revived at the National, includes two short sequences with some of the best theatre dialogue I've ever encountered; it's a lovely play.
Given your background, you'd really like Dave Mustaine's searingly honest autobio. I'm not a fan of his music, but I was entirely enthralled from page 1. I bought it in 2012 and I still think about it. As Tyson's autobio is bizarre and surprisingly self-aware. And he's far more powder puff than powder keg. I also love Ron Hanson's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Reminds me of this Hemingway quote from ‘The Sun Also Rises: “Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.”
This is a line by Bill, a character who is saying a lot of nonsense in chapter 12. Hemingway is not stating his own beliefs in this comment but, on the contrary, mocking the American navel-gazing nationalism. He definitively had an inkling that James Joyce, Chateaubriand, George Orwell, Henri James, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Becket, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, W.H. Auden, Edna O’Brien, Bertolt Brecht, or Aldous Huxley, to name just a few, had written books very much worth printing.
There remains a simple truth to the statement, regardless of who wrote it, what character said it, or any other facet. As sentence, positing a supposed truth, it should be considered on its merit and either outright rejected or accepted as a plausible truth. As righteous as expatriates can be, they can no longer call themselves patriots, can they?
I would agree that the original statement is clearly false (even if it accurately describes a category of writer) and would include in the list of people who wrote in a country that was not their country of origin Nobel prize winners Camus (Algeria), VS Naipaul (Trinidad).
In your second statement you make a different argument; that even if expatriates may write something that is worthwhile to someone, it doesn't reflect the experience and concerns of their original country. That's more defensible (though I suspect it would also require a fair number of exceptions) but not what the original Hemmingway line says.
NickS (WA), absolutely. I only mentioned authors that were Hemingway's contemporaries. He died in 61 so he could not have read the second wave of exiled writers from the Soviet Union although he may have read Ivan Bunin, another exiled Nobel Prize in Literature, and maybe even Boris Pasternak. I was not sure about Naipaul and Camus. Possibly he read the later?
JB Minton is not entirely wrong in the way that there is clearly a link between the language and the country but all writers and poets are 'displaced' within their own language. They wouldn't write if not.
Plus there is another phenomenon as important as the place/soil/country where one writes from: time. Specifically for biographies which is the topic that started this conversation. I am French-born and I grew up in France but when I read Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, I read more than just 'in French'. I read the language of a time, the time of my parents generation. And while it is also the language of a place, a very small village in backwater postwar France, this place is more foreign to me than New York City where I live now because it is far in time. The connection of writing to a place or a country is meaningless when not thought through a time. This makes all writers exiles because regardless of where they are, they write from a place that already ceased to exist.
The quote was not about being a patriot or not but whether expatriates can write something worth printing.
The far right and populism have always used the logic consisting of making the soil/country/nation the first condition and the boundaries of creativity. It only takes knowing history to debunk this notion.
In the better late than never category, I nominate The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne. Another wonderful British writer rendered beautifully by Byrne.
I'm terribly late to the party on this one, but I so adore Dodie Smith and ‘I Capture The Castle’. It is the one book I give to every writing student who is trying to find her voice. I love how it opens with Cassandra in the sink of this freezing old pile just trying to have a bath--never mind the beautiful stable boy Stephen's ill-conceived, but well-intentioned plagiarizing of poems to win her heart. And then there's the ultimate scheme of getting old man Mortmain to write again by locking him in the tower! It's exactly what my girls and I would have done to my ex-husband to get him to work 😂 But all this time, I hadn't a clue about Ms. Smith's plays... Cannot wait to read Grove's bio and dig up all I've missed. Thanks ever so for this!
Such a great book for voice. What else do you use?
'The Wavemaker Falters' by George Saunders because it's short and shows that for a story to really work... 'the heart must always be in conflict with itself', but then at the other end of the spectrum, Dashiell Hammett and his hard boiled vernacular. It builds a whole world.
I love this piece so much! You blended fiction (I assume gun-toting-genre-bully is fiction and your family is safe) and non fiction so well.
Shot In The Heart is one of my favorite books and Mikal is a good friend. I would love to forward this to him. Is it possible to fix the typo on his name? (Mikal not Mika.)
Oh God yes please. Fix coming.
Delighted to hear you're a biography fan! If you're looking for your next great read, can I blatantly plug my Literature for the People, published last week? Did you know Macmillan Publishing was founded by two poorly educated sons of an Arran crofter, and they did it because they believed the working classes needed access to better, cheaper books? And within 2 generations you get Prime Minister Harold? It's quite a tale.
Bought already!!
I actually am that person with the gun. I threaten people in that fashion regularly. It’s a completely normal thing to do with such time on your hands and such an insatiable desire to cause anxiety in others (stemming from a childhood accident involving a bag of marbles that left me irreparably mentally scarred - but I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?).
Though, you were mistaken. For I am woman, and this is how you will hear me roar.
Regardless, sounds like a great read!
Great suggestions, Nick, and I am in full agreement with you about biography as a top-notch, but strangely overlooked, genre. It's hard to beat Claire Tomalin, who first got me hooked, and let's hope that Hermione Lee's Anita Brookner comes out soon.
Thank you so much for recommending Dodie Smith, and for the list of biographies you include at the top of your piece. I'm sure you've already read it, Nick, but for anyone perusing the comments - 'Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story' by Nick Tosches is also a fantastic read.
I love that book. I couldn't list everything!
I love biographies and I love Dodie Smith, so this post was pure pleasure to read. For anyone who is interested in Dodie Smith’s life, I recommend Slightly Foxed’s podcast dedicated to her life and works (they’ve published her memoirs).
Dodie Smith also wrote her own autobiography, in several volumes - I found it fascinating, especially the first volume, 'Look Back With Love'.
Dear Octopus, recently revived at the National, includes two short sequences with some of the best theatre dialogue I've ever encountered; it's a lovely play.
Wasn't it fab! We saw it too
kewl! i capture the castle sounds like a rachel cusk thing on steroids and perhaps less sensual nww to this writer but loved Dalmatians film as kid
It's not a Rachel Cusk thing. It's a charming, odd, funny novel about Bohemian types. Fantastic voice. A coming-of-age classic.
certainly got that i was only displaying my ignorance/limitation of countryside English life while wishing to shoehorn in one
of my own gratitude for Cusk’s hilarious “the Country Life”
perhaps the incorrigible way i roll
apologies 😉🙃
Given your background, you'd really like Dave Mustaine's searingly honest autobio. I'm not a fan of his music, but I was entirely enthralled from page 1. I bought it in 2012 and I still think about it. As Tyson's autobio is bizarre and surprisingly self-aware. And he's far more powder puff than powder keg. I also love Ron Hanson's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
You write brilliantly. But then again with one held at gun point and all that Jazz brings the best out of us.
I believe James Shapiro wrote "1599." Greenblatt wrote the equally excellent "Will in the World."
OMG thanks! You're right.
Reminds me of this Hemingway quote from ‘The Sun Also Rises: “Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.”
This is a line by Bill, a character who is saying a lot of nonsense in chapter 12. Hemingway is not stating his own beliefs in this comment but, on the contrary, mocking the American navel-gazing nationalism. He definitively had an inkling that James Joyce, Chateaubriand, George Orwell, Henri James, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Becket, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, W.H. Auden, Edna O’Brien, Bertolt Brecht, or Aldous Huxley, to name just a few, had written books very much worth printing.
There remains a simple truth to the statement, regardless of who wrote it, what character said it, or any other facet. As sentence, positing a supposed truth, it should be considered on its merit and either outright rejected or accepted as a plausible truth. As righteous as expatriates can be, they can no longer call themselves patriots, can they?
I would agree that the original statement is clearly false (even if it accurately describes a category of writer) and would include in the list of people who wrote in a country that was not their country of origin Nobel prize winners Camus (Algeria), VS Naipaul (Trinidad).
In your second statement you make a different argument; that even if expatriates may write something that is worthwhile to someone, it doesn't reflect the experience and concerns of their original country. That's more defensible (though I suspect it would also require a fair number of exceptions) but not what the original Hemmingway line says.
NickS (WA), absolutely. I only mentioned authors that were Hemingway's contemporaries. He died in 61 so he could not have read the second wave of exiled writers from the Soviet Union although he may have read Ivan Bunin, another exiled Nobel Prize in Literature, and maybe even Boris Pasternak. I was not sure about Naipaul and Camus. Possibly he read the later?
JB Minton is not entirely wrong in the way that there is clearly a link between the language and the country but all writers and poets are 'displaced' within their own language. They wouldn't write if not.
Plus there is another phenomenon as important as the place/soil/country where one writes from: time. Specifically for biographies which is the topic that started this conversation. I am French-born and I grew up in France but when I read Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, I read more than just 'in French'. I read the language of a time, the time of my parents generation. And while it is also the language of a place, a very small village in backwater postwar France, this place is more foreign to me than New York City where I live now because it is far in time. The connection of writing to a place or a country is meaningless when not thought through a time. This makes all writers exiles because regardless of where they are, they write from a place that already ceased to exist.
The quote was not about being a patriot or not but whether expatriates can write something worth printing.
The far right and populism have always used the logic consisting of making the soil/country/nation the first condition and the boundaries of creativity. It only takes knowing history to debunk this notion.
"Knowing history" is a big assumption to make of other parties, especially those communicating semi-anonymously or fully anonymous online.