The prose of Daphne du Maurier manages to be many conflicting things at once, but in the most linear fashion possible. It is both rugged and sensitive, doddering and witty, romantic without ever being sentimental.
I haven't read "Rebecca" yet because I hear that is her crowning achievement. The book made du Maurier a literary star. They say its opening line is one of the most evocative in literature. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Maybe I will wait until I'm 40 or so to crack that one. Because I just realized something. I've made short work of the almost all the rest of her oeuvre, powering through like a glutton at the all-you-can-eat buffet table trying to get his $10.99's worth.
I will have to dole du Maurier out to myself now in order to make her last! The way a mother will portion out Halloween sweets to a child so they don't cram themselves full in one glorious binge, only to go without forevermore.
Because since May or so I've been methodically plowing through her collection, flopping on the patio chair of a weekday evening, the sun shining and the flowers blowing, a glass of booze in hand, taking sanctity in du Maurier's austere environs. This can't go on!
There is always a pang when you read the last work of a dead authour. That's it for them! No more dispatches from that particular land. It's grim. Fortunately, there are always new, great writers to discover. It doesn't lessen the melancholy though, of closing the last book you'll ever read from somebody great!
On an opposing note, it's also hard to accept the likes of John Grisham, Danielle Steele and Dean Koontz are unstoppable powerhouses of mediocrity. They will just not leave the fucking pen alone. It would take you forever and a day to burn through all that gas!
Post script: Sweet Italian Jesus! The woman has a perfume as well.
Look at the tiny amount of perfume you actually get. The ratio of fancy-dancy packaging to actual smelly stuff is as lopsided as a burlesque bosom! How appropriate. How "metaphorical" as a writer type might say! The superfluous far outweighs substance! And I'm sure the odor is as heavy handed as the writing.
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10 smart remarks:
I have read your words. Well put, well written! You can e-mail me if you wish and get to see my blog once you e-mail me. I am an artist. mtrigosart@gmail.com.
I read several du Mauriers in my teens and forgot about them until recently when I read her autobiography. So I took up again with The House on the Strand. Have you read it? Suffice it to say that I haven't tried any more since. I should really, but I can't help feeling none of them will live up to my memory of Rebecca, though even there I wonder if re-reading it would be a disappointment.
There are too many great writers to ever get through them all-my personal weakness involved Science Fiction so I have plowed through the works of Asimov, Hienlien, Clark, and all the great short stories of F&SF Magazine.
I've recently discovered The Discworld books of Terry Pratchette and there are a lot of those to wrok through as well.
With me, it's been an age thing. Writers who rocked in high school (Hemingway) made me puke by the end of college. Writers who were good in college (Dickens) left me cold a decade later. Post college heartthrobs (DeLillo, Roth) seem contrived now. I'm sure than the folks I am reading today will meet the same fate in the future.
I no more try to ration my authors than I would try and ration a lover. I gulp them down in the way a sensible Cinderella would have drunk champaign at the ball.
Daphne du Maurier is always on the shelves of the thrifts I frequent- I always think one of these days I'll buy a book of hers.
Auggh The Danielle Steel perfume looks like candied trash.
OK, my apologies, as this has nothing to do with the post, although I have read Rebecca and loved it. I have also felt that pang upon reading the last word in the last book of a dead author.
However, I am here to request that you hop over to the pub, and submit a fact for max.
Thanks
A perfume. And what a perfume. Personally, I have always been intrigued by this author's name. Steel is such a pretty name for a lady, don't you think?
Ignore the above comment. I already have you pretty well pegged. No challenge. Yawn.
Unless you are the one who chews her tonails. I haven't figured that one out yet. (You aren't, right?)
Of course you're not. Or toenails, even. Mink oil. I remember. Perhaps the freckle lady. Naw.
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