[ilds] Saving the text

[Charles Sligh]

On 6/21/11 1:50 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

>         Interesting choice, Charles.  Many would probably agree with
>         you.  Less controversially, I would choose to save /The
>         Alexandria Quartet/ — or, to be specific, the /Quartet/ as I
>         first experienced reading it, which is, of course, impossible.

I chose /Prospero's Cell/ because of its quietism and its intimacy of 
economy -- in the Greek sense -- Bruce.  It is very Epicurean.

For such a brief work, /Prospero's Cell/ also carries within it a 
delightful variety.   Some of it is history, some personal.  When I 
think of the book, I imagine it as a sort of cupboard, with shelves 
packed full of personal talismans and mementos left over from the last 
season.  But then I am merely quoting from another island book:  "/These 
are the sorts of things which the writer carries about like talismans/, 
/to remind him of lost experiences which he must one day re-evoke and 
refashion in words/[. . . .]."

And that talismanic quality of /Prospero's Cell/ is perhaps central to 
my strategy.  I fancy that I could utilize that island book like a House 
of Memory, its chapters and sentences calling into being all of 
Durrell's other books that were lost in this (hypothetical) holocaust.

My other choice would be to save the /Justine/ notebooks.  These days I 
find that I rarely think of the /Quartet/ in its published, finished 
terms.  Instead, I relish the birthmarks, the bruises, the beauty marks 
of the thing-in-the-making.

C&c.

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


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