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  • From the VQR Vault:The Literary Life

“Every serious novelist,” she wrote, “is trying to portray reality as it manifests itself in our concrete, sensual life, and he can’t do this unless he has been given the initial instrument, the talent, and unless he respects the talent, as such.” For herself, she had no doubts.

Arthur F. Kinney, Flannery O’Connor and the Art of the Holy, Spring 1988

I remember that we talked about another book by Faulkner which had been published a couple of years before “Sanctuary,” and which we had both read. This was “The Sound and the Fury.” We agreed, rather solemnly, as young men habitually do, that it was a work of genius, but imperfect, and derivative of Joyce and Flaubert. I did not then understand the vanity that makes young men enjoy detecting literary influences; so I thought that Joyce in the Benjy section and Flaubert in the Jason were not assimilated. Here was mere imitation.

Allen Tate, Faulkner’s “Sanctuary” and the Southern Myth, Summer 1968

The person in class and the person revealed in Sylvia Plath’s letters, journals, and eventual poems were entirely different. Longing, anger, ambition, and despair appear to have been motivating factors for that gifted poet. These Furies expressed themselves outward frequently, as they did even more totally inward, toward herself and her achievements. As in a Greek tragedy, in which the elements of destruction reside within the character of the protagonist, the elements that led to her suicide had been apparent even in the early stages of her adolescence.

Kathleen Spivack, Some Thoughts on Sylvia Plath, Spring 2004

The novel is a friend like any other: steadfast, there when you need him or her, friendly to you but in need of your friendship (that is, your sympathetic reading) as well. The earliest novels were people, in effect: Pamela is Richardson’s heroine writing for help, Robinson Crusoe is an outcast telling you of his trials (which you’ve had, too) and triumphs (and you’ve had a few of those as well).

David Kirby, What Is a Book? Spring 1999

Can’t say he walked the walk.    Talked it, but everybody        did that, everybodyhad a story to front,    the essential mess of their life.

Rita Dove, “Pretty Boy,” Spring 2009

Fitzgerald knew how all of us struggle with vanity, with the pride that the upper intelligentsia is not, in this century, inclined to regard as the sin of sins. In the character of Gatsby, whose evil was no match, really, for ours, and in Dick Diver, whose descent into Purgatory or Hell is almost emblematic for many students (and not only those in medical school) who wonder what will become of them and why, a bold and shrewd writer gave us ourselves, all too covetously enamored of what is all too readily available “this side of paradise.” Dr. Diver, like Dr. Lydgate before him, begs our interpretation—but also our shuddering mercy, we who, in significant numbers, aim to pick and choose our way through the wares (personal and professional both) of this life.

Robert Coles, An American Tragedy, Spring 1984

Find the full text of these works online at vqronline.org. [End Page 224]

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