Comments on: Edna O’Brien

By: Marie

Marie — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:16:22 +0000

This lovely lady, was way a head of her time… And she was punished in the past for being real.

By: Marie

Marie — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:09:55 +0000

Hi , I am looking for an email address for Edna O’ Brien the author…I want to make contact with this lovely lady.

I would be very greatful if you could forward on her email address please. Thank You. Marie Fitzpatrick.

By: jds

jds — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:04:21 +0000

Serendipity at its best. I happened to recently pick up a copy of O’Brien’s Joyce bio at my favorite second-hand book store, and immensely enjoyed her cystalline clarity and incandescent sensibility. Her prose is so shiney, i can clearly see my reflection in it. And then i bopped on to this site tonight because I was googling to find out more about her, and was terriby unaware of her former literary output. And how on earth, could she have been born some 10 years before I was??!! I relish te prospect of reading her work.

This was my favorite blog experience ever. Thanks for sharing the exchange from a week ago.

By: jdyer

jdyer — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:50:31 +0000

I loved O’Brien’s invocation of Wordsworth.

Yes, all introspective art is emotion recollected. Wordsworth said tranquility but I believe that he also meant distance in time and space, or at least in isolation.

Joyce used to say that while he physically left Dublin it was always alive in his mind. He also wrote that if Dublin were to be destroyed it could be reconstruced from his work.

By: peggy sue

peggy sue — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 04:53:32 +0000

The Light of Evening arrived at the bookstore where I work today and I managed to steal into a few pages. I found them not so purple but multi-colored with a sheen with perhaps some lurking violet laced shadows.

I am listening to the show now with great appreciation. Thanks!

I too love the literature programs.

By: jdyer

jdyer — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:06:28 +0000

Great show.

I loved O’Brien’s passion for her work and Chris’ passion about literature.

I would love to hear more programs on literature, of all kinds: poetry, fiction, drama.

By: jdyer

jdyer — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:12:13 +0000

Here is an interesting quote from The Atlantic:

“After reading Wild Decembers Philip Roth told O’Brien that although he’d always thought of her as being like that other “passionate” literary lady, Collette, he’d changed his mind. “You’re not like Collette after all,” he’d decided. “You’re more like Faulkner.” As it turns out, William Faulkner is second only to James Joyce in O’Brien’s personal pantheon; Wild Decembers has in it echoes of both writers.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba2000-04-20.htm

This is quite an endorsement.

By: jdyer

jdyer — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:08:05 +0000

Peggy Sue, I meant to answer your question but got derailed by work.

I haven’t read any fiction by O’Brien yet, but juding from work on Joyce and Beckett I have a problem visualizing her as a writer of purple prose. If she does deploy emotionally tinged descrpitive passages she is probably being ironic or describing event from a character’s point of view.

By: Peggy Sue @ work

Peggy Sue @ work — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:21:02 +0000

to answer my own question I went to Dictionary.com…

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empurpled

empurpled

adj : excessively elaborate or showily expressed; “a writer of empurpled literature”; “many purple passages”; “speech embellished with classical quotations”; “an over-embellished story of the fish that got away” [syn: embellished, over-embellished, purple] n : a chromatic color between red and blue [syn: purple, purpleness]

By: jdyer

jdyer — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:18:05 +0000

Correction:

I would like to know how Oâ€™Brienâ€™s reads Philip Roth. Does she see him as a comic writer or as a tragic one who only came into his own only in his latest novels?

btw: I first became aware of Edna O’Brien’s writing through Philip Roth.