Tuesday 9 May 2017

James Joyce's Desiderata

Silence, exile, and cunning, James Joyce's desiderata for an artist's life, seemed to have been discovered by Heather with the rapidity and the inevitability of one who led a charmed existence.
A Friend from England, ch. 8

The famous Joyce quote, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, serves Brookner's purpose here, at least to an extent (more relevantly we might recall Jane in A Family Romance, exiling herself to Dijon and 'stealthily' beginning to write); but it is still surprising to see such an unBrooknerian writer being recruited on to Brookner's team.

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