Reviews for The Agony and the Ego

The average rating for The Agony and the Ego based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-09 00:00:00 Christopher Peart A collection of short essays by published writers on how, why, where, but not what to write. They range from the excellent (Hilary Mantel, Jane Gardam, Patricia Highsmith, Lorrie Moore) to the uninformative (Marilyn French provides no insights, but talks about how feminism changed her life, Malcolm Bradbury only tells that that working at a university is great) to the weird (Roberston Davies (?) about being un homme de lettres, Brian Moore (not that one) on Tolstoy). "I create things out of boredom with reality and with the sameness of routine & objects around me." - Patricia Highsmith "All art is based on a desire to communicate, a love of beauty, a need to create order out of disorder." � ibid "Do not despise your instincts like some awful parents affect to despise their children." � Jane Gardam "For it's crucial to keep ourselves, as a species, interested in ourselves.... art has been given to us to keep us interested and engaged rather than distracted by materialism or sated with boredom so that we can attach to this life, a life which might otherwise be a unbearable one." � Lorrie Moore "Writing is both the excursion into and the excursion out of one's life." - ibid

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-13 00:00:00 Shawn Harbin The insights into writing are timeless, and worth reading by anyone who has ever tried to write and found themselves dissatisfied with the result. What's truly fascinating however, is the portrait of a vanished age, the 1990s when Sunday papers carried whole extra supplements dedicated to the latest books. I couldn't help wondering what all these writers would make of the internet, about to burst into their lives.