Category: books
Letter of advice from T.S. Eliot to a young writer
T.S. Eliot, one of the most well-known authors in the world at the time, was contacted by Alice Quinn in 1952 in need of help and direction. Since no one “becomes” a writer by accident, the sixteen-year-old asked the poet if he could discuss the writing process and how he personally acquired his poetic sensibility…
Pelléas and Mélisande’s musical fate: Fauré, Debussy, Schönberg, Sibelius
The drama by Maurice Maeterlinck “Pelléas and Mélisande”, an icon of literary symbolism that aroused the interest of the great composers of the late XIX century, including Fauré, Debussy, Schönberg, Sibelius.
The Green Mile’s Miracle
Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile (1996) once fascinated my teenage consciousness. It had everything a hungry imagination craved: a parable-narrative, the dark atmosphere of the death-row unit at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary, an interesting temporal and geographical context Typical, or archetypal, triad of heroes (there is analogy with the Bible and three crucified people…
Birth of the British Novel
Author of the documentary Birth of the British Novel (2011) – BBC Four – Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain’s radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry…
Letter of advice from Louisa May Alcott to a youth author
A feminist activist, a poet and a writer, famous above all for the novel “Little Women” and “Good Wives (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages, replied to one of those writers with some valuable advice on Christmas Day, circa 1878: My Dear Miss Churchill,I can only say to you as I…