#literary

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work. ↗

— Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

#botany #chemistry #course #decisive #determining

We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends. ↗

— Vaclav Klaus

#also #became #board #broad #called

Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible. ↗

— Joe Klein

#american #anonymity #anonymous #back #bible

If the relation of morality to art were based simply on the demand that art be concerned with values, then almost every author should satisfy it even if he wrote with his prick while asleep. (Puritans will object to the language in that sentence, and feminists to the organ, and neither will admire or even notice how it was phrased.) ↗

— William H. Gass

#art

Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons. ↗

— Roman Payne

#cash #credit-cards #digital-age #gold #literary-style

She realized, when relationships failed to last, it was not because love was no longer present, but because people had stopped believing in themselves and in their partners. ↗

— Christina Westover

#christina-westover #inspirational #literary-quote #love #poisoning-sylvie

Literary studies were no more than a series of autopsies performed by heartless technicians. Worse than autopsies: biopsies. Vivisection. Even movies, which I love more than anything, more than life itself, they even do it with movies these days. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#life

Movements in literature were not caricatures - in the sense that they actually functioned as an ideology in politics does. As now a monopolistic ideology in politics prevails in the literature as well a single movement prevails: that of networking as a literary quality. Quality = networking is the magic formula: take a Krijn Peter Hesselink, never managed to score a positive review but reviews are old news: it is only referential authority trickling down from that network pyramid that counts. Thus, nowadays its perfectly possible to be on top of the Pyramid without ever getting a positive review, or - even worse - I even see people rising in literary ranks that have never written any books at all. Ergo, your point that another ideology would make a 'caricature' of literary history is exactly the same reasoning used by neoliberals to deconstruct any political change: another ideology? Impossible, because they no longer exist, only we still exist. In this way you get a pyramid shape you also see in popular music. It's still the bands from the 70's and 80's who earn the big money. New talent can't really play ball anymore. This of course embedded in a sauce of eternal talent shows, because the incumbent males have to just keep pretending they are everyone's benefactors. In the literature its the same: it is still Pfeijffer that gets the large sums of money from the Foundation of Literature, and it's still Samuel Vriezen pretending that that doesn't matter. 'Controversy' therefore structurally undesirable. After all, it would require a redistribution of power. The pyramid is especially interested in promoting mediocre types that promote safe and boring life visions, because then one ever needs to fear for his position, which, in case of serious controversy, they'd be forced to defend. Ergo, 100 interviews with Maria Barnas, and zero with Martinus Benders. ↗

— Martinus Hendrikus Benders

#ilja-pfeijffer #literary-movements #maria-barnas #life

I can see the singles ad now: ‘Three straight men, a gay man and a woman trapped in one body, seeks a lady willing to share her lipstick and shoes. A perfect match must enjoy cleaning automatic weapons, dividing anti-psychotic drugs into a weekly pill keeper, and long walks on the beach.’ The calls would just pour in. ↗

— Autumn Rosen

#men

A turning point in the criticism of Hardy’s poetry came in his centenary year, in which W. H. Auden (1940) recorded his indebtedness to Hardy for his own education in matters of poetic technique. .......................... In a radio interview, Larkin defended his liking for Hardy’s temperament and way of seeing life: ‘He’s not a transcendental writer, he’s not a Yeats, he’s not an Eliot; his subjects are men, the life of men, time and the passing of time, love and the fading of love’. Larkin freely acknowledges the influence on him of Hardy’s verse, which results in his rejection of Yeats as a poetic model. ........................................ It is a similar kind of response that gave rise to an important study by Donald Davie (1973). Davie feels that ‘in British poetry of the last fifty years (as not in America) the most far-reaching influence, for good or ill, has been not Yeats, still less Eliot or Pound, not Lawrence, but Hardy’, and that this influence has been deleterious. ↗

— Geoffrey Harvey

#education