ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG
"Youth is a time of melancholy."
- Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar
"By the time you're nineteen you have a pretty good idea of some of the things you're not going to be; but more often, this sense of one's limitations, the really penetrating understanding, happens in late youth or early middle age."
- Raymond Carver, 'John Gardner: The Writer as Teacher', in Call If You Need Me
posted by The Silver Eel @ 10:08 am
4 Comments:
true - I am only now coming to grips with the fact that I am unlikely to become an interstellar bucanneer.
Hey Joe, I think you'd make a great interstellar buccaneer though.
Isn't the Alexandria Quartet fabulous?
I heartily recommend Prospero's Cell, Lawrence Durrell's book about Corfu.
I'm afraid that, despite its reputation for having been almost revolutionary in the 1950s, I have never read the Alexandria Quartet. I only know the quote from reading the first few pages of Balthazar quite a number of years ago, and that one line stuck with me. At the time I found it comforting, and I still think it's true. I do own a copy of Clea because I once knew, rather more vaguely than I wanted to, a girl with the same name, and though I think it's in a box somewhere, it remains unread.
I must admit, I enjoyed the Alexandria Quartet massively at the age of 17/18, but the last time I started it I couldn't get into it. It remains a luminous experience in my memory, though.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home