A post over the weekend about the demise of literary fiction stirred up some fantastic debate. Thanks to everyone who weighed in.
In a June 29 New Yorker, there’s an article about a recently discovered trove of Edith Wharton letters that she wrote to her governess, the one person who encouraged her writing, truly a lifeline in a censorious home.
The closing quote speaks, I think, to our debate: “I don’t believe there is any greater blessing than that of being pierced through & through by the splendour and sweetness of words…I wouldn’t take a kingdom for it.”
Of course, that might be weighed against the blessing of being pierced through & through by Gabriel Byrne or Jon Hamm.
Betsy Lerner 
Your blog generally provides a kick in the ass for my writing inspiration. Your last comment, however, leaves me contemplating pleasures other than taking pen to paper. Thanks for blowing my concentration this afternoon.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Crack Up
I ain’t there yet.
I laughed so hard. Nice!
Pierced, no. Plumbed, maybe.
I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I just read Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence) for the first time yesterday. I haven’t felt this way about a book in a very long time.
I love Edith Wharton’s ‘Ethan Frome’. There’s literary fiction for you and I have long cringed at my inability to produce something of that caliber.
A good friend, Carrie Tiffany, is in the throes of working on her second book. Her first novel, Scientific Rules for Everyday Living is testimony to her efforts. For an Australian, she has received a whack of recognition here and elsewhere, even in the US.
I hear about her struggle to write. It’s different from mine. I write non-fiction. Mine’s a struggle, too, but different, maybe less intense, bt as I say that, I have to draw breath.
I’ve been in trouble recently for something I put out there that disturbed some people. while I was questioning the ethics of writing as i do, Carrie reminded me of the importance of writing that gets a response. Much like Betsy’s quote from Wharton. Kafka too wrote something about the need to pierce the reader’s sensibility and sometimes hurt.
I’m sorry if I don’t stay on the topic but that’s the point isn’t it? to associate one thought with another and thereby create a string of associations that might lead to new thoughts, Even when the links are tenuous.
I read that New Yorker article…. which inspired me to read Age of Innocence.
Ethan Frome was high school required reading.
Age of Innocence has left me reeling with romance… which doesn’t usually happen , I swear.