Byatt / Drabble

Scottie,

Please don't apologise for your dissenting view. Luckily for me, perhaps, I read Byatt blissfully unaware of anything much about her (although obviously I was aware she was a fairly impressively high flying academic). I'm not even much given to looking at the picture of the author which usually appears in books (in fact I can't remember if there is one in my edition of the Byatt books or not). I can see what could anatagonise any number of people about her writing, though, but it really appeals to me.

I've never read any Margaret Drabble, do you recommend her? I realised recently that, surprisingly given I was brought up by a generation of almost agressively feminist women, I've read hardly any modern female authors. Now, I'm not too bothered about the feminist implications of this, but I am bothered that I've probably missed something good.

And by the way, are Byatt and Drabble really sisters, or only in the figurative sense? My nostrils flare at the smell of gossip just like Kim's.

Lucy-Ruth xx

From: "Scottie Bowman"
Subject: Re: Reading recommendations- a dissenting view

OK, OK, I know, it's unfair but I just can't help it.
There's something about Antonia Byatt's physical
presence that brings me out in hives. All I can ever
see is the costive expression of a woman gasping
for air, having stuffed herself to the gills with large
cream buns.

Her prose strikes me as just as fatally loaded with
uncooked dough. All those pages, all that unrelenting
detail, all those literary allusions, all that ponderous
intellectual preening ....

The feud with her sister, Margaret Drabble, has long
been the gossip of the London salons. I never had
any problem knowing which side I was on.

Sorry.

Scottie B.

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Received on Fri May 30 06:29:31 2003