Deducing what actually seems to have been going on in the mind of the author of the famous review trashing The Lord of the Rings: my latest Tolkien Society blog post.
There are places in Mitchison's autobiographical writings where she seems to imply that she was at least conscious of bi leanings, or maybe just homoromantic feelings: but would not Wilson have dismissed any critical opinions of hers from serious consideration on the grounds of her gender anyway?
But it's a particularly bizarre argument to begin with.
I have read a great deal of Wilson over the years (I started in the late seventies, as part of my Alien Minds project, that is, trying to see through the eyes of someone I fundamentally disagree with. Evelyn Waugh was another of my projects.)
I found, at least, Wilson's most passionate work being TO THE FINLAND STATION. He was one of those idealistic communists, at least in his early years. Later, yep, he became more curmudgeonly.
He definitely had problems with women--cf his marriages, and the way he talks about his affairs in his journals. Some of it is pretty stomach turning. His fiction, on the prose level, is controlled but the whole is . . . the only word I can think of is constipated.
I don't want to say that I think he was incapable of passion--it's there in his earlier political writings--but I do think he was one of those incapable of wonder.
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calimac
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Date: 2018-01-18 02:44 pm (UTC)But it's a particularly bizarre argument to begin with.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 03:47 pm (UTC)I found, at least, Wilson's most passionate work being TO THE FINLAND STATION. He was one of those idealistic communists, at least in his early years. Later, yep, he became more curmudgeonly.
He definitely had problems with women--cf his marriages, and the way he talks about his affairs in his journals. Some of it is pretty stomach turning. His fiction, on the prose level, is controlled but the whole is . . . the only word I can think of is constipated.
I don't want to say that I think he was incapable of passion--it's there in his earlier political writings--but I do think he was one of those incapable of wonder.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 03:56 pm (UTC)