The music in the ice : on writers, writing & other things

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Title:

Author:

Watson, Stephen.

ISBN:

9780143026907

Personal Author:

Watson, Stephen.

Publication Information:

Johannesburg : Penguin Books (South Africa), 2010.

Physical Description:

xv, 381 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Leonard Cohen & longing -- Poetry & absence : one writer's account -- Late Milosz -- The clarities of Hemingway -- The Madonna of Parnassus -- Work & love : the letters of T.S. Eliot -- Dante, Eliot & other things -- The heart of Albert Camus -- On Guy Butler -- The meaning of an island -- The rhetoric of violence in South African poetry -- Four South African epitaphs -- Bitter pastoral : a talk about the Cedarberg -- Voting with my feet -- Buiten Street -- Afterword to a city -- Hannah Hunter Watson -- One foot-note.

Abstract:

"In this collection of essays, Stephen Watson turns to the writers who have endured for him; to the places that have formed him; and always to the nature of writing and literature itself."--Back cover.

Personal Subject:

Watson, Stephen.

Subject Term:

Literature -- History and criticism.

South African literature (English) -- History and criticism.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025467248	824.914 W342M 2010	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In this collection of essays, Stephen Watson turns to the writers who have endured for him; to the places that have formed him; and always to the nature of writing and literature itself.

The range is remarkable- he moves from Leonard Cohen to Dante, from Albert Camus to Allen Ginsberg, not excepting Czeslaw Milosz and T S Eliot. Closer to home, there are essays on Robben Island and the meaning of the Cedarberg. More personally, movingly, a final section of the book returns to the site of a love affair, the birth of a daughter, and what it is that defines his native city, Cape Town.

Whatever Watson touches on, he gives substance to the line from Pasternak that gives this collection its title- 'the music in the ice.' In Watson's hands the essay form itself becomes an instance of that music.

Here is a book that demonstrates again why Justin Cartwright has called Stephen Watson 'South Africa's foremost essayist'.