Carolina QuotesChristina Stead has a Chinese say, “Our old age is perhaps life’s decision about us” — or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“An Unread Book”, p. 42
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- p. 42
Cite this record
“Christina Stead has a Chinese say, “Our old age is perhaps l…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-98A67D5923. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/98a67d5923
More from Randall Jarrell
“Modern” poetry is, essentially, an extension of romanticism; it is what romantic poetry wishes or finds it necessary to become. It is the end product of romanticism, all past and no future; it is impossible to go further by any extrapolation of the process by which we have arrived, and certainly it is impossible to remain where we are — who could endure a century of transition?
One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that “the way it really was” half the time is, and half the time isn’t, the way it ought to be in the novel.
The writer does not get from his work as he writes and reads it the same aesthetic shock that the reader does; and since the writer is so accustomed to reading other stories, and having them produce a decided effect upon him, he is disquieted at not being equally affected by his own.