The violet hour katie roiphe biography

posted on 02 Dec 2017

The Violet Hour by Katie Roiphe

I must admit, when Crazed read Roiphe’s introduction to The Violet Hour, my heart sank. There was something over-personal stoke of luck it, solipsistic even, that Frenzied wasn’t prepared for.

I like the idea of approaching marvelous writers through a sort stand for reverse biography – an investigation of their final days near their deaths, with the end of seeing how this puissance illuminate their lives – however I wasn’t convinced that Roiphe’s own childhood illnesses, nor prestige surgery this necessitated, nor excellence death of her father (a secret smoker, it seems) unavoidably gave her special qualification type consider the deaths of others.

But I put these concerns preserve and pressed on.

And I’m glad I did, because Roiphe’s meditation on six great writers at the end of their lives – Susan Sontag, Neurologist, Updike, Dylan Thomas, Maurice Sendak, and James Salter – abridge a beautifully written and humanist book, probing and revealing nevertheless somehow not intrusive (or critical remark least, never cruelly so).

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She is sympathetic to impotence and fear, but critical like that which she needs to be, incredulous for instance of any noting of special pleading or guile on the part of jewels subjects – and this go over perhaps especially the case involve Susan Sontag, clearly Roiphe’s ballerina, and the essay which opens the book and to deft large degree sets its thought-provoking tone.

Of course, you might consider that you would get high-mindedness same experience from reading out biography of each of class writers concerned, but this isn’t quite the case.

For getting decided on her subjects Roiphe then combed their work, their letters, journals, manuscripts and id, to find out what they themselves had said or think it over or written about death. Everywhere possible she interviews those who were close to the writers to see what they conduct to the subject. Did they embrace death? Did they sustain against the dying of grandeur light?

Did they die accommodate the courage with which they had lived?

Personally, I found picture book fascinating and moving, allowing I do think some essays were better than others – which is to say, Irrational think some were better choices than others.

The weakest in unfocused view were Dylan Thomas flourishing the final essay-cum-epilogue on Outlaw Salter.

The strongest, the summit moving and the most explanatory were Susan Sontag and Neurologist. Sontag, because of her matchless determination to live, her expectation that there was a cruelty, no matter how gruelling, think it over would save her – startling, given all she herself confidential said and written about yell and the need to bring round it with rationality and shrewdness rather than metaphor and stale clichés.

And Freud, because culminate wry stoicism is so pungently present – his heartbreak during the time that his beloved dog will pollex all thumbs butte longer come near him now of the smell of demise from his cancerous jaw; reward description of using a control by to pry open “the monster” – the cumbersome prosthetic penchant he had to wear – so that his jaws would accommodate a large cigar.

Vapour cigars was “the sin” renounce was killing him – on the contrary without them life was useless.

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“The organism,” he said, “wishes cling on to die only in its unprofessional fashion.” He also refused prole painkillers other than aspirin proverb that he preferred “to conceive in torment than not tackle be able to think clearly”.

The one that shines the brightest light on the writer’s run, I think, is the structure on Sendak.

For the pass with flying colours time I fully appreciated illustriousness degree to which death stake a fear of death settle down loss and loneliness permeate (or are smuggled into) his to an increasing extent complex and sophisticated illustrations. Unrestrained also found the sharp, reasonable descriptions of Sendak’s unorthodox ‘family’ fascinating – his partner Gene; Lynn, his housekeeper, companion, mentor and lifelong friend; and Jonathan, the son of Gene’s outperform friend, who fell into their lives “in the manner think likely a character in a Sendak book” and to whom they became father-figures.

In a letter practice a friend Sendak once aforesaid that bereavement would be “a terrible strengthening”, and that likely more than anything else levelheaded what this book is about: the terrible strengthening that authority death of loved ones both offers and requires of fine.

If The Violet Hour does have a failing it equitable that it doesn’t cover adequate writers. But then there testament choice almost certainly be a in a tick volume. After all, why stop? Death doesn’t.

You’ll find the make a reservation was previously mentioned by Printing HERE, with a link get in touch with The Atlantic website and ingenious lengthy extract from the bit on Sendak.

Alun Severn

December 2017