#AWW2018: Shirley Hazzard
- Editor: Brigitta Olubas
- Title: Essays on the works of Shirley Hazzard
- Read essay: Future Anterior: The Evening of the Holiday (2014)
- Read story: The Evening of the Holiday
- Pubished: 1966 (novel)
- Monthly reading plan
First reading: essay by J. Frow Prof. Literature University of Sydney
- The text was NOT educating despite this man’s stellar credentials!
- But that was my fault….I have to learn to read these scholarly works:
- I thought a literary professor would encourage me to read Shirley Hazzard’s
- book The Evening of the Holiday….he has done just the opposite!
- Frow has made the book so confusing (theme of punctuality…huh?).
- I was not going to let this happen…I read the essay a second time.
Second reading:
- I have now learned to gather specific information that
- I feel enlightening and if the author wants to
- go off on a tangent (punctuality)…I let him go but did to follow him!
- I’ve also learned to make a plan: if the words are ‘too academic’
- for example, comedy of incommensuration I must take the time to find
- …words in the dictionary that make the meaning clearer.
- Also in literary theory the words aesthetic and ethical are often used.
- As soon as I see these words my mind goes blank.
- Now I have learned the basic meanings of these words
- …so I can continue in the flow of reading without losing my mind!
- aesthetic – more concerned with the love of beauty, emotion and sensation…as opposed to
- ethical – more intellectualism ( accepted morals; principles of right and wrong)
Conclusion:
- Despite my rocky start reading J. Frow’s essay
- …I do want to read The Evening Holiday!
- The story which quietly allows people to change their
- …minds about one another
- …and fall in love without melodrama.
- Characters:
- Middle aged, married Tancredi
- young Sophia (British/Italian descent) in 1950’s Tuscany.
- I am curious how Shirley Hazzard
- …brings this all together in just 144 pages.
The Evening Holiday (story)
- Published: 1962 ‘long short story’ in the New Yorker
- Published: 1966 novella
- Trivia: textures of Italian life and culture are bound up with the romance
- Structure:
- ch 1-6 courtship – ch 7 festival in village – ch 8-14 affair – ch 15-16 au revoir.
- Characters: are attracted to each other’s complications
- Weak point: Hazzard spends 50% book describing everything
- …fountains, gardens, piazza’s, villa’s countryside and even the post office.
- This sense of space gets ‘out of control’.
- Strong point: Hazzard uses inner dialogues to move the action along.
- We read what Sophia is thinking VS
- …what Tancredi THINKS she is thinking.
Last Thoughts:
- This book was very short and easy to read.
- There is a rhythm to the sentences.
- Personally I found the love affair too sugar spin sweet.
- There were no passionate outbursts, pledges of love
- …just a ho-hum fling that was reaching an inevitable ending.
- I will not let one book discourage me….
- ..and will try to read more of Shirley Hazzard!
- #NeverGiveUp
3 Comments
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I love Shirley Hazzard so would be interested in this book.
But, I’m going to comment on words being “too academic”. I do volunteer indexing with a little team of film journals, and some of them can get very academic and theoretical. A phrase I remember from a recent article was “the citationality of the performative form”. What?!!? My mind goes blank sometimes too!
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I thought a writer should extend a hand to the reader and draw him/her into the book or essay.
When an academic (as George Eliot so nicely expresses…) “…dips his wings in the ‘mare magnum (great sea) of philosophical interpretation….” I generally float way on my wings!
It depends on the book…if I’m determined to learn something I will gladly look op words in the dictionary!
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Haha Nancy, love it. I agree… I think the only proviso here is who the writer is writing for? An academic may not be writing for a lay audience so is not interested in extending his/her hand to all readers?
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