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"Many of these selected letters are written to women whom Jim Farrell loved and whom he inadvertently hurt. His ambition to be a great writer in an age of minimal author's earnings ruled out the expense of marriage and fatherhood, so self-sufficiency was his answer. Books Ireland has portrayed him as 'a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a man who wanted solitude and yet did not want it, wanted love but feared commitment, reached out again and again but, possibly through fear of rejection, was always the first to cut the cord.' But Farrell's kindness, deft humour and gift for friendship reached across rejection, which must account for why so many such letters were kept." Funny, teasing, anxious and ambitious, these previously unpublished letters to a wide range of friends give the reader a glimpse of this private man. Ranging from childhood to the day before his death, Farrell's distinctive letters have the impact of autobiography.
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Chanelle Fetterman
reviewed J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries on February 21, 2015
J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries
This book is a set of letters written to supportive friends and to people in the publishing business with whom he worked and was keen to cultivate good working relations with. They indicate Farrell's focus and committment to his writing and trace his development as a writer from the time before the natural theme of his books emerged to even himself. It gives a good picture of the trials and discipline of getting his novels written. The letters inform friends on what perspectives he had on some current affairs, and show his determination and application in getting his novels over the line and published, with the demands of working with agents. Not having read his novels yet, in this series of letters he seemed quite concerned with the structure of his novel's narrative and what bits could be left out and still empower him to let his characters rip on some of the outrages of colonial society that he was documenting in 'Troubles', 'Siege of Krishnapur', 'The Singapore Grip' and 'The Hill Station'.
This book seems to essentially a presentation of materials assembled and analysed for Greacen's book with commentries 'J.G. Farrell, the Making of a Writer', 1999. As such, it really does demonstrate how this writer became more confident in what he was writing. On pp 176-177 there is a fascinating letter from September 1969 written to his agent detailing the structural pruning of his manuscript. In his later career, he negotiated advances to write up commissions that involved travel and research in India in 1971 and South East Asia in 1975. This series of letters show how novel writing is both a trial for the author who not only has to create the story, but also be detached enough from it to prune it mercilessly to reach the final manuscript for publication and how all writing is a learning process in the development of ones opinions on various matters of the day. As a reader of remarkably few biographic and autobiographic works on writers from Ireland, Greacen has provided with Farrell's letters as good an introduction to the genre as any.
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Add J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries, Many of these selected letters are written to women whom Jim Farrell loved and whom he inadvertently hurt. His ambition to be a great writer in an age of minimal author's earnings ruled out the expense of marriage and fatherhood, so self-sufficiency was , J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries, Many of these selected letters are written to women whom Jim Farrell loved and whom he inadvertently hurt. His ambition to be a great writer in an age of minimal author's earnings ruled out the expense of marriage and fatherhood, so self-sufficiency was , J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries to your collection on WonderClub |