{"product_id":"written-lives-9780811216890","title":"Written Lives","description":"In addition to his own busy career as one of Europe's most intriguing contemporary writers (\u003cem\u003eTLS\u003c\/em\u003e), Javier Marías is also the translator into Spanish of works by Hardy, Stevenson, Conrad, Faulkner, Nabokov, and Laurence Sterne. His love for these authors is the touchstone of \u003cem\u003eWritten Lives\u003c\/em\u003e. Collected here are twenty pieces recounting great writers' lives, or, more precisely, snippets of writers' lives. Thomas Mann, Rilke, Arthur Conan Doyle, Turgenev, Djuna Barnes, Emily Brontë, Malcolm Lowry, and Kipling appear (all fairly disastrous individuals), and almost nothing in his stories is invented.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Like Isak Dinesen (who claimed to have poor sight, yet could spot a four-leaf clover in a field from a remarkable distance away), Marías has a sharp eye. Nabokov is here, making the highly improbable assertion that he is 'as American as April in Arizona, ' as is Oscar Wilde, who, in debt on his deathbed, ordered up champagne, remarking cheerfully, 'I am dying beyond my means.' Faulkner, we find, when fired from his post office job, explained that he was not prepared to be beholden to any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp. Affection glows in the pages of Written Lives, evidence, as Marías remarks, that although I have enjoyed writing all my books, this was the one with which I had the most fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New Directions Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/17\/2007\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780811216890\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.53lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.94h x 7.10w x 0.59d","brand":"Javier Mar\u0026#237;as","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42935537729717,"sku":"9780811216890","price":12.71,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_3777ae86-da83-4d89-a39c-27c16fb2a4bc.jpg?v=1688488914","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/written-lives-9780811216890","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}