[ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce

[James Gifford]

Hi Bruce,

On 2015-12-29 12:45 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> This seems to
> me defensive—driven by the lack of an
> Oxbridge degree, which Warner had?

I'd feel fairly certain of that!  I'd go a bit further and say such 
defenses or anxieties are fairly common -- there's always someone 
carrying an elementary school grudge when you say you're a teacher, but 
the ferocity tends to increase when you're a professor.  It's certainly 
not unique to Durrell, and all things considered, I don't think it's a 
major trait of his writing, though you're certainly right that it's there.

> Lawrence Durrell was sometimes a “mixer”
> and may have been in the vanguard of a
> new movement.

I suppose I'm a good deal more forgiving of fiction than I am of 
academic work.  I remember a review of the West Coast fantasy novelist 
David Eddings (whose late series The Dreamers takes its core structural 
trait from the Quartet) in which the reviewer complained "he wrote for 
money" -- well, authors do that...  In theory, academics should not, or 
at least it should not be a motive.

On 2015-12-29 1:24 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
 > I’m now suspicious of any passage in Durrell writings
 > that has a scholarly ring to it, particularly those
 > in /Sicilian Carousel/ and/ Greek Islands./  After
 > all, in an interview, he said he “burgled” other
 > people’s ideas.

It's worth adding that he did acknowledge burgling Stephanides' 
unpublished ms. on Corfu for /Greek Islands/ too, though "he wrote for 
money"...  My impression was that Stephanides intended for Durrell to 
take freely whatever was useful.

Haag has also raised the question of Claude's contributions (and 
Durrell's to her books).  Eddings later added his wife's name to his 
books as co-author and commented they'd all really been joint projects 
-- Durrell could have been much the same.  It's almost as awkward as 
sorting out who really wrote a film or TV script...

All best,
James