Tag: Edith Wharton

Writer’s Desk: Edith Wharton on Critics

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment
Illustration from Edith Wharton’s “The Quicksand”

Even Edith Wharton had to deal with critics. In her case, since she wrote about “Fashionable New York,” they primarily wanted to know which of her characters was which real person.

This was irritating.

But that comes with the territory when one has been lucky enough to get a book published and reviewed. People will say things; some nice, some confusing, many irritating.

Wharton counseled not worrying about it:

I long ago made up my mind that it is foolish and illogical to resent even such a puerile form of criticism. If one has sought the publicity of print, and sold one’s wares in the open market, one has sold to the purchasers of one’s books the right to think what they choose about them; and the novelist’s best safeguard is to try to put out of his mind the quality of the praise or blame likely to be meted out to him by reviewers and readers, and to write only for that dispassionate and ironic critic who dwells within the breast.

Of course, it’s a little easier to look past silly critiques when you are Edith Wharton.

Nota Bene: Can Books Teach Empathy?

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

From Jessa Crispin in The Baffler:

Reading Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, I wondered, what the hell is it going to take? For decades we have had these types of critiques … And yet still we have critics like Jonathan Franzen speculating on whether Edith Wharton’s physical beauty (or lack of it, as is his assessment of her face and body) affected her writing, we have a literary culture that is still dominated by one small segment of the population, we have a sense that every significant contribution to the world of letters was made by the heterosexual white man…

Crispin then jumps right past celebrating the continued necessity of Russ’s work:

I am worried we’re all subdividing into tiny, highly specific demographics, and that I’m only going to be encouraged to read the works of other white, middle class, heterosexual, spinster, Cancer sun and Taurus rising women who came from the rural Midwest but now live in an urban area, because only they can truly understand and speak directly to me. It’s a cliché that literature builds empathy. It can help you along in that process, but only if you aggressively work against the impulse to treat literature like a mirror. The first step is to notice that you are doing that…

Writer’s Desk: Edith Wharton and Breaking Hearts

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Edith Wharton's place at Pavilion Colombe, St. Brice-sous-Forêt, France -- not a bad little writing spot.
Edith Wharton’s place at Pavilion Colombe, St. Brice-sous-Forêt, France; not a bad little writing spot.
writingoffictionIt’s common knowledge that the stinging jolt of painful experience can be spun into gold by the great writers. (And let’s be honest here—a mediocre writer is possible of creating greatness with the right material.) But there’s a catch to that truism.

Edith Wharton, who was born on this day in 1862, pointed it out in her book The Writing of Fiction:

As to experience, intellectual and moral, the creative imagination can make a little go a  long way, provided it remains long enough in the mind and is sufficiently brooded upon. One good heart-break will furnish the poet with many songs and the novelist with a considerable number of novels. But they must have hearts that can break.

(h/t: Roxane Gay)