Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for your recent note. You too might have been observant of the odyssey of your mail, from being left in error by the USPS in my mail box at Riverbend to its rescue by a dear neighbor, combined with other mail, re-routed to your home address and picked up by your attentive family and re-routed again to the Townhill in Vermont. It arrived here unscathed just a couple of days ago. Your laudatory references to our past years are balm and tickle my ego and, again, I thank you.
I do like the tone and spirit of your writing, Philip! I do believe you have the gift that I claim comes down from your great-grandfather, my own dad, who earned his life - and enabled ours - with his creative writing.
Having finished the reading of the Virginians some time ago, I took on to the 'Newcomes' by the same author and was very close to ask you to stop spending your time with the Virginians and devote it to the history of this family. Yet, I was myself so captivated by it that time flew by and I landed, by prompts contained in this book's pages, at 'the history of Pendennis', again by the same author.
Pendennis is a name and character often encountered in these writings and one does not doubt one moment that the identity of Mr. Pendennis is really that of the author himself. Which gives credence to the impression that some of the stories he is developing are not entirely phantasy, but based on his personal life, embellished by his creative artistry.
Mr. Arthur Pendennis is the son of a patrician family living in the western part of England. His father's efforts at improving his life are described and his eventual marriage to a young woman of notable standing in society. Their life at their country seat follows and results in the appearance of their one son, Arthur. The early years of this boy go by unremarkable. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful account of the growing of a boy. There is first love, of course, and heartbreak, followed by escape into a new environment: college. This section I loved. It describes so well what I myself encountered during those years and what you will undoubtedly be confronted with during the coming four years of your own studies. But next, towards the center of the book (I will not bore you with page numbers, because like all of my current reading this book is in electronic form and the page numbers change depending on the size of the print selected by the reader) the hero of the story is introduced into the literary life of London. It is because of this central section, and knowing your dreams of becoming a published writer, that I recommend 'The History of Pendennis' to you with special emphasis. This book was published in mid-1800. You might snicker and say that the conditions today are quite different. Maybe so, in some technical details, but not in the matter of personal relationships between members of the literary circle and the need of publishers to print that which will be bought. I, myself, had the opportunity to roam along the edges of the society of the printed word and have some proofs to show that my product was published, so I claim the right of authority to say that Mr. Pendennis' experiences are no different than what an ambitious writer of today might encounter. You will also find a great many sections that discuss life, sometimes in form of a discourse between friends, sometimes between enemies, and sometimes in a monologue and you see in these debates many of the ideas developed which even today plague our society.
Personally, I confess that I am totally captivated by Mr. Thackeray's writing. It is so evident that he is not spilling fantasy, but life experience, and his style is such that even when he describes the most despicable atrocities of his times, or the shortcomings of man even today, one is left with a good feeling because of the way he expresses the negative. If you have spent some time on the Virginians, you have received a smattering of what I am talking about.
Use your browser to get into the library of Gutenberg.com and enjoy some really, really good reading and writing, including some wonderfully informative content of life as it was then, and recognize the threads that are still hanging on to our present day social patterns. At least I think that some old habits are good to practice even today.
With my best regards and most heartfelt good wishes for this brief interim period between the high school and the yet higher college years. May you be granted the strength to sustain in the next your successes of this first phase in your education. "Ahem!"
Your Opa
Thank you so much for your recent note. You too might have been observant of the odyssey of your mail, from being left in error by the USPS in my mail box at Riverbend to its rescue by a dear neighbor, combined with other mail, re-routed to your home address and picked up by your attentive family and re-routed again to the Townhill in Vermont. It arrived here unscathed just a couple of days ago. Your laudatory references to our past years are balm and tickle my ego and, again, I thank you.
I do like the tone and spirit of your writing, Philip! I do believe you have the gift that I claim comes down from your great-grandfather, my own dad, who earned his life - and enabled ours - with his creative writing.
Having finished the reading of the Virginians some time ago, I took on to the 'Newcomes' by the same author and was very close to ask you to stop spending your time with the Virginians and devote it to the history of this family. Yet, I was myself so captivated by it that time flew by and I landed, by prompts contained in this book's pages, at 'the history of Pendennis', again by the same author.
Pendennis is a name and character often encountered in these writings and one does not doubt one moment that the identity of Mr. Pendennis is really that of the author himself. Which gives credence to the impression that some of the stories he is developing are not entirely phantasy, but based on his personal life, embellished by his creative artistry.
Mr. Arthur Pendennis is the son of a patrician family living in the western part of England. His father's efforts at improving his life are described and his eventual marriage to a young woman of notable standing in society. Their life at their country seat follows and results in the appearance of their one son, Arthur. The early years of this boy go by unremarkable. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful account of the growing of a boy. There is first love, of course, and heartbreak, followed by escape into a new environment: college. This section I loved. It describes so well what I myself encountered during those years and what you will undoubtedly be confronted with during the coming four years of your own studies. But next, towards the center of the book (I will not bore you with page numbers, because like all of my current reading this book is in electronic form and the page numbers change depending on the size of the print selected by the reader) the hero of the story is introduced into the literary life of London. It is because of this central section, and knowing your dreams of becoming a published writer, that I recommend 'The History of Pendennis' to you with special emphasis. This book was published in mid-1800. You might snicker and say that the conditions today are quite different. Maybe so, in some technical details, but not in the matter of personal relationships between members of the literary circle and the need of publishers to print that which will be bought. I, myself, had the opportunity to roam along the edges of the society of the printed word and have some proofs to show that my product was published, so I claim the right of authority to say that Mr. Pendennis' experiences are no different than what an ambitious writer of today might encounter. You will also find a great many sections that discuss life, sometimes in form of a discourse between friends, sometimes between enemies, and sometimes in a monologue and you see in these debates many of the ideas developed which even today plague our society.
Personally, I confess that I am totally captivated by Mr. Thackeray's writing. It is so evident that he is not spilling fantasy, but life experience, and his style is such that even when he describes the most despicable atrocities of his times, or the shortcomings of man even today, one is left with a good feeling because of the way he expresses the negative. If you have spent some time on the Virginians, you have received a smattering of what I am talking about.
Use your browser to get into the library of Gutenberg.com and enjoy some really, really good reading and writing, including some wonderfully informative content of life as it was then, and recognize the threads that are still hanging on to our present day social patterns. At least I think that some old habits are good to practice even today.
With my best regards and most heartfelt good wishes for this brief interim period between the high school and the yet higher college years. May you be granted the strength to sustain in the next your successes of this first phase in your education. "Ahem!"
Your Opa
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