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Cargando... The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the Endpor Katie Roiphe
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. In this interesting collection, Roiphe pieces together the final days of 5 writers: Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas and Maurice Sendak. Using original sources, letters, interviews and other impressive, exhaustive research she is able to paint a portrait of each writer's "final descent." Also included is a black and white photograph of each writer's office/work-space, which is a nice touch. Because it is all second-hand information, (except for James Salter in the epilogue, who is still a robust 89 and not anticipating death, whom Roiphe speaks to herself), sometimes the narrative is a little clunky, trying to make the pieces fit. For the most part though, it is an eloquent homage to both the life each artist lived and the death they faced. There are some beautiful lines here from Roiphe herself who is no stranger to the concept of death, having had a sickly childhood and other health set-backs as an adult, and the original words of her case-studies both in their published works and their private reflections resonate and ultimately comfort. Death is the only sure thing in life and though each had a different circumstance and approach (Sontag: relentless cancer treatment; Freud: no painkillers; Updike: published essentially from his hospital bed) they each have something worthwhile to impart. Kudos to Roiphe for tackling a difficult, often taboo subject in a respectful, enlightening way. Her commentary after the last author: "This seems to be key: staring into something you have always been terrified of and finding it beautiful." (247) Being, ostensibly, a description of the last weeks of five authors, with a concluding interview with a very aged novelist. All are well-known if one includes the final subject, of whom I had not heard, but to whom she attributes skill and considerable renown.. This book is fairly interesting in the fleeting moments when it stays on topic. For the most part, however, it's a book of tangents: pop psychology (e.g., Sigmund Freud's love of his cigar) and literary criticism (e.g., Jno. Updike's oversexed protagonists) abound. The book also has a longish introductory chapter in which the author describes a serious childhood illness which she experienced, though, confusingly, she begins it with a quotation from another, whom I assumed was having the illness. However, it only took me five or six pages before I realized that she was talking about herself. Even less promisingly, in this chapter especially, when she began enumerating attitudes which "everybody" holds about death, it would be difficult for me to imagine a series of propositions from which I feel more alienation. Nonetheless, when she gets down to business, it's a worthwhile read. I enjoyed the beginning and end of the book where the author wrote of her personal experience, but was sadly disappointed in the writing of the main body (five "great" writers) of this book. The feeling persisted that the author had a stack of index cards from her copious research and just plopped them down in some sort of chronological order. And the name dropping! Apparently for the sin of not cooperating with this book, poor Annie Leibovitz was identified ad nauseam. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Distinciones
"In this category-defying book, Katie Roiphe takes an unexpected and liberating approach to the most unavoidable of subjects: death. She examines the final days of five great writers and artists. Here is Susan Sontag, the ultimate intellectual, finding her commitment to rational thinking tested during her third bout with cancer. Here is Sigmund Freud fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna for London only to continue the constant cigar-smoking that he knows will soon kill him. Roiphe takes us to the hospital room where, after receiving the worst kind of diagnosis, seventy-six year old John Updike immediately begins writing a poem. She vividly portrays Dylan Thomas's extraordinary self-destructive tendencies that culminate in his infamous final collapse at a Greenwich Village tavern. And she shows us how Maurice Sendak's beloved books for children are infused with his lifelong obsession with death, if you know where to look. In each of these glorious creators' final moments, Roiphe finds bravery, suffering, bad behavior, passionate love, peacefulness, bursts of energy, and profound thinking. In a voice that is unsentimental, compassionate, urgent, Roiphe helps us to look boldly at death and be less afraid"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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No matter what, the stories are presented in a way that is completely factual but still provides a great deal of insight. I though the author did an amazing job of presenting the stories in a very personal way without putting herself between the reader and the subject. ( )