Carolina QuotesWhen At Play in the Fields of the Lord was published in 1965 there was revealed in stunning outline the fully realized work of a novelist writing at white heat and at the peak of his powers; [...] Peter is a poet and a scientist, and the mingling of these two personae has given us such carefully observed, unsentimental, yet lyrically echoing works as The Cloud Forest, Under the Mountain Wall, The Tree where Man was Born and The Snow Leopard. [...] We behold a writer of phenomenal scope and versatility.
William Styron Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Section, 'Peter Mattheissen' [from the Introduction to Peter Mattheissen, A Bibliography: 1951-1979, compiled by D. Nichols (Orirana Press, 1979)] - p.273, 274
- work
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
- year
- 1951
- locator
- p.273
Cite this record
“When At Play in the Fields of the Lord was published in 1965…” William Styron. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-D603B00B82. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/d603b00b82
More from William Styron
For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.” There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful, strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables... Let your love flow out on all living things. But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God, and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets, including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone.