Customer Reviews

Progress of Stories

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Laura Riding, 1901-1991, was a force in the world of letters. I had been looking forward to reading Laura Riding for a long time. Given her reputation, what I knew, I thought she was difficult. I was aware of her relationship and influence on Robert Graves.

What I discovered was that her work is not necessarily difficult, at least for us. Rather, she was a woman ahead of her time. If she were alive today she would be concerned with semiotics.

She writes in a preface that she does not believe in wasting generosity. She writes that a storyteller must make discoveries. Laura Riding believes her function as a writer is not storytelling but truth telling. She seeks to make things plain.

She does have a scolding tone. She also writes stories of ideas, dilutions she calls them. In her preface it is fair to say that she attacks the conventions of the short story. (One is starting to see that Robert Graves could not resist her.)

Laura Riding speaks of a quaint cult of story writing. Truth can be the story the mind tells itself. Truth lightens the mind.

The first stories in the collection are fairy stories. On Hans Christian Andersen she says the right way to look is to see and not to see too much. If one sinks into one's self on is a hater. A lover sinks into the world.

The stories are strange and the efforts of Laura Riding are serious. I do not know whether the lines she followed are fruitful. I had trouble finishing the works.

The pieces certainly shine with art, somewhat in the manner of Gertrude Stein or Djuna Barnes of NIGHTWOOD. I would hazard a guess that "Reality as Port Huntlady" is a masterpiece.