Kathryn Hughes
‘Have You Got Their Letters?”
Imagine you’re a biographer and you’re attending one of those literary parties which, even in these straightened times, speckle December like a light falling of snow. You find yourself in conversation with a novelist/a poet/someone who simply turned up with a friend and is wondering how soon they can leave without looking rude. Your inter-locutor asks you politely ‘who are you working on?’ and you tell them. They may have heard of your putative subject, or they may not have a clue who you are talking about. But their next question will always be the same: ‘have you got their letters?’
Letters, you see, are considered to be the purest source material that a biographer can access. With your subject’s letters, so the thinking goes, you’ve got a short cut to their very essence. For what are
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553