Patrick White Letters |
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| Author:
| White, Patrick |
| Editor:
| Marr, David |
| ISBN: | 978-0-226-89503-1 |
| Publication Date: | Jun 1996 |
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $46.00 |
Book Description:
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"Letters are the devil, and I always hope that any I have written have been destroyed."--Patrick White Patrick White spent his whole life writing letters. He wanted them all burnt, but thousands survive to reveal him as one of the greatest letter-writers of his time.
Patrick White: Letters is an unexpected and final volume of prose by Australia's most acclaimed novelist. Only a few scraps of White's letters have been published before. From the...
More Description"Letters are the devil, and I always hope that any I have written have been destroyed."--Patrick White
Patrick White spent his whole life writing letters. He wanted them all burnt, but thousands survive to reveal him as one of the greatest letter-writers of his time. Patrick White: Letters is an unexpected and final volume of prose by Australia's most acclaimed novelist. Only a few scraps of White's letters have been published before.
From the aftermath of the First World War until his death in 1990, letters poured from White's pen: they are shrewd, funny, dramatic, pigheaded, camp, and above all, hauntingly beautiful. He wrote novels to sway a hostile world, but letters were for friends.
The culmination of ten years' work and reflection by David Marr, author of the well-received biography Patrick White: A Life, the volume tells the story of White's life in his own words. These are the letters of a great writer, a profound critic, a gossip with the sharpest eyes and tongue, a man who loved and hated ferociously, a keen cook, an angry patriot, and a believer never free of doubt.
"A literary milestone."--Kirkus Reviews
"Mean-spirited and brilliant, the 600 letters collected here offer real insight into the life of the Nobel-Prize winning Australian author. White's venom is matched by his torment, and the whole volume is redeemed by outstanding writing."--Publisher's Weekly ("Best Books 96")
"[T]hose who come to these letters after having read Marr's biography will expect more than shop talk from the master novelist. They will expect the bracing bitchiness of a master curmudgeon. And they will not be disappointed."--Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer
Patrick White (1912-1990), Australian novelist and playwright, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. His many novels include Voss, The Twyborn Affair, and Riders in the Chariot.