Status Updates From Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry

I was trained to seek out first-person witnesses to historical events. I truly enjoyed Margaret Kennedy's The Feast, and stumbled upon this title of MK's diaries (journals?) published by Yale University Press in 1941.

I'm listening to the audio on Everand, and checking the print book on archive.org.

“In fact poetry is the only medium in which the real truth can be told about life here, which is why this journal is so unsatisfactory, because I am not a poet” (173).

Written in Sept 1940 as the Blitz had begun.

Lots of funny lines in chapter 4!

“I say it is not fair to judge America from the novels of Lewis or Steinbeck who are remorseless critics of their own country. What takes Lewis’ imagination is dissonance…What is fine and noble he does not bother to mention…Cather or Dorothy Canfield gives an entirely different picture but quite as true. If American democracy were put to the test wouldn’t the people they write about carry the day…?”

“He said if I must read a newspaper I should stick to The Times because I would find any news there was put in a way that would send me to sleep instead of keeping me awake. He said that when a war broke out once in the Balkans and there were scare headlines in all the streets, The Times headline said: ACTIVITY IN EUROPE” (72-73).

😂😂

Lots of funny bits!

Second book for People April!