
The Guardian Bookblog has an interesting post about the worth of reading the early work of great writers, such as Virginia Woolf (who, by the way, I'm not a fan of, but that doesn't mean I'm afraid of her). In terms of the argument of whether juvenilia should be read or considered part of the artist's overall body of work, I agree with something I read by Bill Buford years ago where he said that there are no child prodigies when it comes to novelists. Yes, an eight year-old can play Mozart or do math or be some other kind of technical whiz, but an eight year-old will never be able to write "The Heart of the Matter." Writing, to me anyway, is something much more than the skill of putting words together; it's also the art of having something interesting to say. Hemingway's a great example in that the vocabulary he used was not huge or special, but the effect his simple words achieved--when married to his material--was amazing. And although some writers wrote some very good work very early (Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" was published when he was only 24), I think we should leave their teenage years alone.
From the Guardian: "Is there any point in reading juvenilia? Loosely defined as work created during a writer's youth, the term encompasses everything from early jottings about pets to works of the status of Frankenstein. While the genre has always fascinated academics, however, a recent batch of publications has attempted to bring the writing of youthful authors to a wider readership."


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