[ilds] Wordspinners

[Bruce Redwine]

Yes.

Bruce



> On Mar 19, 2016, at 2:17 PM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> Having written commercially myself, I think it is easy, at least for me, to write with more than one head, so to speak. Writing for magazines and journals to a deadline for pay, sometimes good pay, requires a different mind cast to producing a a good poem; that comes from another place. As a writer Durrell was across multiple genres and wrote for diverse audiences but I agree with Bruce that whether dashing off a potboiler, a travel book or a great novel cycle, the strength and beauty of Durrell's poetry comes through them all, yes even Sicilian Carousel, an underrated book in my view. As an actor can play many parts, so can a writer but something of his essence flavours them all. 
> 
> David
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 20 Mar 2016, at 6:05 AM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net <mailto:bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>> wrote:
> 
>> Excellent response.  This is the real issue--what's the relationship between Durrell as serious writer and Durrell as hack, greedy or not?  I see the two as directly related, with varying degrees of importance.  A good writer doesn't stop being a good writer simply because he or she writes to make money.  Durrell's Sicilian book and the one on the Greek islands were both written mainly to make money, and he even disparaged the former as something of a potboiler.  Both books, however, have many excellent sections and are relevant to his "serious" work and to the man himself.  I would add the Antrobus stories, along with the "ephemeral" pieces, to his body of work.
>> 
>> Also, Durrell's commentary on his own habits/objectives should be taken with heaps and heaps of salt.  D. H. Lawrence had it right, in my opinion, when he said, more than less, that readers should trust the book and not the author.
>> 
>> Bruce
>> 
>> R
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Mar 19, 2016, at 10:45 AM, james Esposito <giacomoesposito72 at gmail.com <mailto:giacomoesposito72 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Forgive me as a newcomer, but surely Lawrence Durrell made it clear that he saw his paid work as distinct from his serious novels,poetry et cetera? His boast about the writing of the 'Antrobus' stories and the use to which he put the money and the comparison with P G Wodehouse and Proust suggest that he really did see himself as two types of writer. I'm not saying that these two writers were entirely separable, but I think Durrell was conscious of a difference in his approach to different tasks - the ephemeral newspaper and magazine assignments and the major works. And perhaps "avaricious hack" is not quite the way to describe him when he sat down to quickly write a piece, maybe off the top of his head, which would earn him some necessary money so that he could get back to spending quality time on his 'serious' or 'real' (as he called it) work?
>>> James Esposito
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 4:29 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net <mailto:bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>> wrote:
>>> I guess you could also say the same about Shakespeare, who also wrote for money and got rich at it.  So I guess there's no need for any secondary material.  I don't think that Durrell divided his time between being an avaricious hack and a "serious" writer and that there's no connection between the two.
>>> 
>>> Bruce
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>> On Mar 19, 2016, at 5:35 AM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org <mailto:mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> All this talk of a green finger-stall prompts me to suggest that the green-ness of the thing may have originated in LD's sense of his Irishness. The green finger-stall, on an upraised finger, might suggest rectal penetration which would accord perfectly with the idea of his fascination with dirt/mud. An Irish suppository up the British arse, which he DID specifically refer to.
>>>> I'm only joking of course but jokes seem to be the only recourse in the face of such pointless waffle.
>>>> LD was a wordspinner. He wrote for money. So whatever words were to hand at the time had to do service. He was NOT trying to say anything profound about mud-bricks, just using what he had (or hadn't) seen, in an article for which he was going to be paid much-needed cash.
>>>> Admittedly he did espouse and entertain ideas (I've tried to show as much in my book) but these were kept for his 'serious' work and let's remember that at the outset he sharply distinguished between 'Durrell' and 'Norden' (from which Miller dissuaded him). Norden wrote for money, Durrell wrote as a quest. Let's not confuse the two.
>>>> RP

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