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Bezig met laden... T. H. White; a biographydoor Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Erelijsten
T H White, author of The Sword in The Stone, The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlyn, The Goshawk, and many other works of English literature, died at sea from a heart attack in 1964, aged 58. The eminent novelist and critic Sylvia Townsend Warner was asked to wrote his biography, the only study of his life, now republished for a new generation. The biography was published in 1967 and was Warner's greatest critical success since her first novel, Lolly Willowes, in 1926. It reveals White's passionate life, his determination to learn, his lifelong worship of hawks and dogs, his self-exile to Ireland during the Second World War, the creation of The Sword in the Stone, the first in the tetralogy The Once and Future King, and the unexpected wealth and fame that came with the Disney cartoon. Warner treats White's repressed homosexuality and his sexual predilections with humane understanding in this wise portrait of a tormented literary giant, written by a novelist and a poet. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)828.9Literature English & Old English literatures English miscellaneous writings English miscellaneous writings 1900-LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4)
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4
Sadly, White was a strange, lonely, eccentric, self-absorbed, conflicted mess. The only living being he ever truly loved was his red setter Brownie (and believe me, I do get that). But he was still capable of personally drowning in a bucket a litter of unwanted puppies born due his own negligence. He decided to be a falconer, and his goshawk first escaped and later died... again, due to his own carelessness and/or ignorance. He could be charming and overbearing; prone to riding roughshod over people in his own enthusiasms. He flitted from England to Ireland to the Channel Islands (mostly to evade taxes); occasionally proposed to women who he never ended up marrying (he was gay, attracted to young boys, and had sadistic inclinations); wrote some wonderful, imaginative stories and some pretty terrible maundering. He died alone in a stateroom aboard a ship en route to Greece, and was buried there.
Townsend is largely sympathetic, especially to his travails as a writer, but her portrait of White is not pretty. I took a shot at Once and Future King after finishing the biography, but while there is much to charm and admire in The Sword and the Stone, it rapidly declines thereafter into a lot of endless pantomime silliness, nasty women, and more creepy violence.
For fanatic Arthurians, and I suspect a lot of them won't like him or his take on Arthur either. Three stars because it is a competent, graceful biography of a man I ended up not liking at all. (