Gioia Diliberto writes about PEARL CURRAN, who channeled the spirit of writer Patience Worth, who published novels and poetry in the early 20th century.
(Click on the title to get to the full article now!)
"Speaking through a Ouija board operated by Pearl Lenore Curran, a St. Louis housewife of limited education, Patience Worth was nothing short of a national phenomenon in the early years of the 20th century. Though her works are virtually forgotten today, the prestigious Braithwaite anthology listed five of her poems among the nation’s best published in 1917, and the New York Times hailed her first novel as a “feat of literary composition.” Her output was stunning. In addition to seven books, she produced voluminous poetry, short stories, plays and reams of sparkling conversation—nearly four million words between 1913 and 1937. Some evenings she worked on a novel, a poem and a play simultaneously, alternating her dictation from one to another without missing a beat. “What is extraordinary about this case is the fluidity, versatility, virtuosity and literary quality of Patience’s writings, which are unprecedented in the history of automatic writing by mediums,” says Stephen Braude..."
Showing posts with label novelists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novelists. Show all posts
4/15/09
GORE VIDAL Quote From PALIMPSEST
From PALIMPSEST a memoir by GORE VIDAL
page 239 hardback
...Although I have had several lifelong friends who were writers, I have never much enjoyed the company of writers. I also did not realize, nor did the others at ... gatherings, that we had arrived on the scene to witness the end of the novel. Today the word novelist still enjoys considerable prestige, so much so that both Mailer and Capote chose to call works of journalism novels. But that was thirty years ago. Today an ambitious writer would be well advised to label any work of his imagination nonfiction, or perhaps, a memoir.
One day, in the spring on 1950, I was invited to lunch by a very ambitious, very young southern novelist who wanted to shine in those social circles that are, for the most part, closed to very young ambitious southern writers. Like Capote, he wanted to be accepted by what was known than as cafe society, and like Capote, he had mistaken it for the great and largely invisible to outsiders, world that Proust had so obsessively retrieved from lost time. In later years , I liked to pretend that Capote had actually picked the right ladder and I would observe,... "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success to get out of." Truman was surprisingly innocent. He mistook the rich who liked publicity for the ruling class, and he made himself far too much at home among them, only to find that he was to them no more than an amusing person who could be dispensed with, as he was when he published lurid gossip about them. Although of little interest or value in themselves, these self-invented figures are nothing if not tough, and quite as heartless as the real things, as the dying Swan discovered when he found that his life meant less to his esteemed ... than her pair of red shoes."
...Although I have had several lifelong friends who were writers, I have never much enjoyed the company of writers. I also did not realize, nor did the others at ... gatherings, that we had arrived on the scene to witness the end of the novel. Today the word novelist still enjoys considerable prestige, so much so that both Mailer and Capote chose to call works of journalism novels. But that was thirty years ago. Today an ambitious writer would be well advised to label any work of his imagination nonfiction, or perhaps, a memoir.
One day, in the spring on 1950, I was invited to lunch by a very ambitious, very young southern novelist who wanted to shine in those social circles that are, for the most part, closed to very young ambitious southern writers. Like Capote, he wanted to be accepted by what was known than as cafe society, and like Capote, he had mistaken it for the great and largely invisible to outsiders, world that Proust had so obsessively retrieved from lost time. In later years , I liked to pretend that Capote had actually picked the right ladder and I would observe,... "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success to get out of." Truman was surprisingly innocent. He mistook the rich who liked publicity for the ruling class, and he made himself far too much at home among them, only to find that he was to them no more than an amusing person who could be dispensed with, as he was when he published lurid gossip about them. Although of little interest or value in themselves, these self-invented figures are nothing if not tough, and quite as heartless as the real things, as the dying Swan discovered when he found that his life meant less to his esteemed ... than her pair of red shoes."
2/3/08
WRITER, AUTHOR, PUBLISHED AUTHOR
What's the difference between calling yourself a writer, or an author, or a published author? I have sometimes felt so defensive of someone's attitude and behavior and words towards me when I say "I'm a writer," that I wonder if I should say author or published author. One writer I know answers that she is "a novelist." She's British and no one seems to question this as an honorable activity for an upper class British woman.
Now I am not a member of the Screenwriter's Union and Screenwriters have not been particularily supportive of me. Yes, this is true, and it is also true that I am for them and their strike.
I think the term writer covers us all, and is the most general and least defensive term. It's the one I use.
What people seem to be asking me/us when they ask us what we do and we answer writer is "Are you published?" "Have you sold?" As if that will legitimitze our activity.
Trouble is a writer has to write even if one never does get published, or published for money, big money. I also think that writers have a more difficult time with all this because an artists' work is more a product. An artist can show a drawing or a painting and it says what it says to the viewer without words, while words can help a reader see in their mind characters and the world of the novel. My writing partner on his memoir, Wes Bryan, got me into calling musicians, singers, anyone in the arts an "artist" but to me it still means painter.
Now I am not a member of the Screenwriter's Union and Screenwriters have not been particularily supportive of me. Yes, this is true, and it is also true that I am for them and their strike.
I think the term writer covers us all, and is the most general and least defensive term. It's the one I use.
What people seem to be asking me/us when they ask us what we do and we answer writer is "Are you published?" "Have you sold?" As if that will legitimitze our activity.
Trouble is a writer has to write even if one never does get published, or published for money, big money. I also think that writers have a more difficult time with all this because an artists' work is more a product. An artist can show a drawing or a painting and it says what it says to the viewer without words, while words can help a reader see in their mind characters and the world of the novel. My writing partner on his memoir, Wes Bryan, got me into calling musicians, singers, anyone in the arts an "artist" but to me it still means painter.
What's on your business card?
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