Why do I write?: An exchange of views between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene & V. S. Pritchett ; with a pref. by V. S. Pritchett

by Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, V.S. Pritchett

Seven interesting letters which share interesting insights on how writers live and what does and does not affect them in the contemporary world as they go about arriving at their concerns.

57 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer and short story writer notable for her books about the "big house" of Irish landed Protestants as well her fiction about life in wartime London.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This interesting little book of only 58 pages (published just after the war in 1948) is actually an exchange of letters between three British writers. V. S. Pritchett thought the idea up and sent off a letter to Elizabeth Bowen. Then, they both wrote to Graham Greene. The question was "Why did they write?" Pritchett comes off as something of a pedantic nerd. Bowen doesn't contribute much. Greene, however, gets quite authoritative: "...one of the major objects of his craft (the novelist) is the awakening of sympathy....for those who lie outside the boundaries of State sympathy...that is a genuine duty we owe society, to be a piece of grit in the State machinery...." IMPORTANT WORDS - especially in today's world, when we have a blow-hard, bullying, narcissistic, con man in the White House.

[James Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book (57 Pages) of letters that is interesting and thought-provoking. Would have rated it higher but for its brevity.

[Aileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little book is a collection of a few letters sent between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and V.S. Pritchett. Despite the title, the book isn't really about why these writers write, the main question that they struggle to answer is what is, and what ought to be, a writer's relationship to society. Some of the responses are a bit silly, but some are pretty sharp. I particularly like Bowen's observation that people are eager for writers to get involved in society because they seem to be "conferer[s] of shape, interpreter[s] of direction"; that writers are being asked, not to triangulate themselves usefully to society, but to build it somehow. All the writers provide a great glimpse into the intellectual mind of Britain in the late 1940s.