Jun 02

William Maxwell, at 90, pondering the past, old books, and the poetry of A.E. Housman:

I get my greatest pleasure from reading — mostly books I’ve read before, but they’re different because I’m different. Once you reach the age of 90 you’re standing in sort of a pivotal position with the past. You remember more, of course, but you also are detached from it, so that it’s as if you were reading a long Russian novel. You don’t … grieve over their mistakes, you think, oh, that’s what those characters did, and how interesting. And that’s how I think about the past. I wouldn’t change it if I could.

Maxwell’s correspondence with Eudora Welty — which I’ll be discussing next Friday night at the New School as part of a Granta event celebrating Welty — was published last month. See also Welty v. Maxwell on autobiography in fiction.

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