Forum / Who said: "A novel is..

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    Matt Dennison
    Nov 15, 06:08am

    a piece of fiction with something wrong with it."?

    The name A. Alvarez keeps coming to mind. I remember this name as belonging to the critic who was Thomas Wolfe's thorn-in-side, for lack of a better word, but when I giggle the name, the earliest references are from the '60s, which places him too late.

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    W.F. Lantry
    Nov 15, 08:35am

    Matt,

    Close. "The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it."

    — Randall Jarrell

    Thanks,

    Bill

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    Matt Dennison
    Nov 15, 02:33pm

    Yep yep yep

    That reminds me I had/have a book of Mr. Jarrel's essays that I read, repeatedly, over a number of years.

    Okay. Was this "A. Alvarez," then (though unconnected to the quote), the critic who gave Thomas Wolfe fits?

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    Sam Rasnake
    Nov 16, 01:06am

    A Alvarez, British writer, was friends with Plath. Too late for Wolfe - should be no connection there.

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    Bill Yarrow
    Nov 16, 02:10am

    A. Alvarez wrote a very good book: The Savage God. It's a study of suicide in literature with a chapter devoted to Plath.

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