Rebecca West

Occasionally I read a book and get obsessed with the author (well, maybe not so occasionally) and suddenly I want to read everything they have written and plenty written about them. My latest obsession is Rebecca West. Recently I read The Fountain Overflows. God, I loved that novel! I kept trying to make myself read it slower so it wouldn't end so quickly, but finally I had to abandon that plan and promise myself to reread it. Then I discovered it is the first part of a trilogy. The other two books I just ordered from Abebooks (see my last post).





While I wait for those to arrive I've been pulling down books from my overflowing shelves and trying to learn more about Ms. West. The first thing everyone tells you is she had an affair with H.G. Wells, who is the father of her only child. More interesting, at least to me, was an essay she wrote on Virginia Woolf after Woolf's death in a book called Recollections of Virginia Woolf. I also found a Paris Review interview she did while digging around my shelves.





She had this to say about Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell: They always looked as if they had been drawn through a hedge backwards before they went out.





In her Paris Review interview she had this to say about Somerset Maugham: He couldn't write for toffee, bless his heart.





And this about W.B. Yeats: He wasn't a bit impressive and he wasn't my sort of person at all. He boomed at you like a foghorn.





And this about the Virgin Mary: You know, I don't really appreciate the Virgin Mary. She always looks so dull. I particularly hate Raphael, Raphael's Madonnas. They are awful, aren't they?




At least she didn't think the Madonna looked like she'd been pulled through a hedge backwards.