Jennifer's, Thank you so much for your summary and reflections of NGS. I confess that at the same time APStogether began the novel, I also was in process reading two other books with two other groups. One was O'Connor's Wise Blood (with A Public Space founding editor, Elizabeth Gaffney in her writer's space, the24hourroom.org) and the other was Woolf's Night and Day, (with the #woolfpack in the space formerly known as twitter.) Both of those books demanded my attention in a way NGS could not compete. I tried staying with it, but while I appreciated the themes, found little to enjoy or admire in the prose, and after about 100 pages I dropped out. I still have it on my kindle, maybe I'll return to it someday! And hope we'll read something else (aps) together again soon! xx
Whew! Thank you. There is so unendingly much to say. For now only, strangely, this: I think of Eliot's "Little Gidding". And then I hear myself say "Little Gissing".
It is a book like Lolita. One wonders how any subject so dreary and interminably unresolvable by an author could have been the focus of a year (or more) of his everyday life. As for me, I look to an author to resolve the problems he creates for his fictional characters through their actions and revelations. Otherwise, I do not see a point in writing fiction.
Thanks for introducing me to a provocative man and writer. Poverty seems intractable and an eternally rich (sorry) subject. As moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote, anything like equality rests on the reduction or eradication nation of poverty. Almost all cultures have a very long road to travel.
While I understand your dilemma, I do think Gissing is very worth recommending, and I can't help but think your writing about him at such length here is a way of doing just that : ) I think he is as worthy of recommending as any other good and interesting writer, which he is both.
I have to disagree about the sentimentality. I can't think of a more unsentimental book, and I think the quote from Shakespeare was a touch of gentleness and a genuine cry from the heart.
I find the characters of New Grub Street have made an indelible impact and the idea of them as real does not seem at all farfetched.
I also think the ending of New Grub Street is pure genius and that he didn't attempt to soften it was an achievement in itself.
Jennifer's, Thank you so much for your summary and reflections of NGS. I confess that at the same time APStogether began the novel, I also was in process reading two other books with two other groups. One was O'Connor's Wise Blood (with A Public Space founding editor, Elizabeth Gaffney in her writer's space, the24hourroom.org) and the other was Woolf's Night and Day, (with the #woolfpack in the space formerly known as twitter.) Both of those books demanded my attention in a way NGS could not compete. I tried staying with it, but while I appreciated the themes, found little to enjoy or admire in the prose, and after about 100 pages I dropped out. I still have it on my kindle, maybe I'll return to it someday! And hope we'll read something else (aps) together again soon! xx
I was struck by this rather prescient line:
”One of these “literary girls” fears she will lose her job to an imagined automaton or “literary machine.””
ChatGPT, anyone?
Whew! Thank you. There is so unendingly much to say. For now only, strangely, this: I think of Eliot's "Little Gidding". And then I hear myself say "Little Gissing".
It is a book like Lolita. One wonders how any subject so dreary and interminably unresolvable by an author could have been the focus of a year (or more) of his everyday life. As for me, I look to an author to resolve the problems he creates for his fictional characters through their actions and revelations. Otherwise, I do not see a point in writing fiction.
As described, sound like “a slog” indeed...
Thanks for introducing me to a provocative man and writer. Poverty seems intractable and an eternally rich (sorry) subject. As moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote, anything like equality rests on the reduction or eradication nation of poverty. Almost all cultures have a very long road to travel.
While I understand your dilemma, I do think Gissing is very worth recommending, and I can't help but think your writing about him at such length here is a way of doing just that : ) I think he is as worthy of recommending as any other good and interesting writer, which he is both.
I have to disagree about the sentimentality. I can't think of a more unsentimental book, and I think the quote from Shakespeare was a touch of gentleness and a genuine cry from the heart.
I find the characters of New Grub Street have made an indelible impact and the idea of them as real does not seem at all farfetched.
I also think the ending of New Grub Street is pure genius and that he didn't attempt to soften it was an achievement in itself.