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The Mackenzies, the Fairfields, and Rebecca West
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14684 |
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BOOK WORLD
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11 / 1988 |
2,811 Words |
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Audrey C. Foote
Audrey C. Foote is a book reviewer and translator who teaches
modern European literature. She lives in Washington, D.C. |
FAMILY MEMORIES, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL JOURNEY
Rebecca West, edited by Faith Evans
New York: Viking, 1988
288 pp., $1995
Since the death of Dame Rebecca West at age ninety in 1983, several interesting books about her have appeared, as would, of course, be expected. Less predictable and more intriguing, there have been also a number of new books by Rebecca West. This is good new for admirers of her political and travel writings like The Meaning of Treason and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and even better news for those who have been charmed by her fine fiction. It will be most welcome of all probably to those whose interest in the woman herself has been aroused by Victoria Glendinning's recent biography of a notable author who was to become also the archetypal new woman and free spirit.
These posthumous publications derive from manuscripts that West had been writing and revising for years yet could not bring herself to abandon, destroy, or unleash into print. Her reluctance to finish them presumably arose less from artistic reservations than because they are so revealing of the most painful and intimate aspects of her own tempestuous life. In fact, it is a wonder and a mercy that she did not burn them all.
Lately various pieces have been emerging, cut, switched, and stitched made coherent and accessible through the labors of several devoted editors. The most current is Sunflower, a fictionalized and sardonic account of young Rebecca's famous affair with H.G. Wells, who is here shown as a grotesquely
... (1998 of 16805 Characters)
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