{"product_id":"written-lives-essays","title":"Written Lives: Essays","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn affectionate and very funny gallery of twenty great world authors from the pen of \"the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature\" (The Boston Globe).  In addition to his own busy career as \"one of Europes most intriguing contemporary writers\" (TLS)  Javier Marias is also the translator into Spanish of works by Hardy  Stevenson  Conrad  Faulkner  Nabokov  and Laurence Sterne. His love for these authors is the touchstone of Written Lives. Collected here are twenty pieces recounting great writers lives  \"or  more precisely  snippets of writers lives.\" Thomas Mann  Rilke  Arthur Conan Doyle  Turgenev  Djuna Barnes  Emily Bront?  Malcolm Lowry  and Kipling appear (\"all fairly disastrous individuals\")  and \"almost nothing\" in his stories is invented.  Like Isak Dinesen (who \"claimed to have poor sight  yet could spot a four-leaf clover in a field from a remarkable distance away\")  Marias has a sharp eye. Nabokov is here  making \"the highly improbable assertion that he is as American as April in Arizona \" as is Oscar Wilde  who  in debt on his deathbed  ordered up champagne  \"remarking cheerfully  I am dying beyond my means.\" Faulkner  we find  when fired from his post office job  explained that he was not prepared \"to be beholden to any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp.\" Affection glows in the pages of Written Lives  evidence  as Marias remarks  that \"although I have enjoyed writing all my books  this was the one with which I had the most fun.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44952124358709,"sku":"ByrdShop_081121611X","price":27.23,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780811216111.jpg?v=1770151661","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/written-lives-essays","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}