By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

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Una fecundidad capaz de alumbrar una obra tan bella y conmovedora como En Grand Central Station me senté y lloré; una joya literaria que sorprende por su plasticidad y por su pasión, pero también por el uso que Elizabeth Smart hace del lenguaje, tan rico y libre como su forma de amar. Elizabeth Smart, a Canadian visiting London, picked up a volume of poetry written by the poet George Barker, and was so affected by his prose, she decided that he was the man she would fall in love with. Elizabeth Smart saw a volume of George Baker's poetry, fell in love with him, and then concocted a tale that included flying he and his wife from Japan to the United States. Brigid Brophy described the novel as "one of the half-dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world".

So her life did not go the way she really wanted it to, and her longing for him permeates this book. What hand of fate placed this book in my path after I'd finished a long series of Muriel Spark books I do not know. Un libro carente de línea argumental, a veces caótico, siempre exigente y extraordinario, y sí, por momentos, oscuro e inescrutable (¡Ay esa parte siete! It says, I remain, I AM, I shall never cease to be: your memory will grow a deathly glaze: you will forget, you will fade out, but I cannot be undone.

Elizabeth Smart did fall in love with English poet George Barker, and she did sponsor he and his wife to stay with her in California during World War II. Hizo todo lo posible por encontrarse con él, a pesar de que sabía que estaba casado, y finalmente se las ingenió para conseguir, a principios de los años cuarenta, que Barker visitara junto con su esposa la colonia de escritores en la que Elizabeth vivía en California. Esta es la historia que hay detrás de En Grand Central Station me senté y lloré –diferente de la que había imaginado al leer el título, pero igualmente conmovedora–, pero los sentimientos cobran tal intensidad en este libro que los hechos apenas tienen importancia. This book is written quite beautifully - the poetic language meant that I really enjoyed actually reading it. I understand that a later book, which actually occupies the second half of this printing, The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals, tells a much less emotional tale of raising four children alone.

par la suite elle fait tout pour le rencontrer (c'est à ce moment-là que le livre démarre), et puis elle vit avec le poète et sa femme, parfois elle couche avec lui, parfois elle prise de remords (pour ce que j'ai compris, car l'histoire est racontée comme un poème; difficile à suivre).Todo está condensado en esas diez fotografías sacadas del álbum de Elizabeth y George: los nervios del primer encuentro; la exaltación de la felicidad, de la belleza y la juventud que no pueden desperdiciarse sin amor; la feminidad desbordada; el orgullo de sentirse amada; el dolor y la desesperación en los momentos de separación; la espera interminable; el rechazo de los demás. I was learning quickly that I in fact new nothing - an astounding, resonating, nothing - which I did NOT like.

It was hard, at first, to warm to Barker, an incorrigible liar inflated by self-regard, who refused to choose between all the women in his life. Despite taking place during the war, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has surprisingly little to do with the political spheres of the world at large, giving it a timelessness when read outside of its linear context, but arguably a tone-deafness when read within. First published in 1945, Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is an enigmatic and nearly indescribable book, a small classic of poetic prose whose author has been compared with Anaïs Nin and Djuna Barnes. I thought that I had underlined some passages I really liked, and I was going to share those here, but apparently I only marked one. Merryn on Yellowface: what a wild ride Interesting to read in the context of the Hugo Award shenanigans and Kuang's excellent book Babel being mysteriously declared ineligible when the awards are being.Pushing the boundaries of what we now refer to as auto-fiction or creative non-fiction, or art writing, Smart placed herself at the centre of her poetry, using her own life as the raw material with which to express her poetic voice. This is undoubtedly a beautifully written book, and as much of the praise of it points out, it feels very timeless. Grand Central Station has over a hundred times more readers on here than the memoir of the affair by Smart's lover George Barker. De hecho, a pesar de todos los reveses recibidos, el amor que sentía la hizo sentir invencible, poderosa, fecunda.

The frustration, for me, was wishing she had used her evident talent and insight on something more substantial than love, especially the banal, self-indulgent 'I love him with my whole being' kind that is only ever a mirror and never a window. From the little I've read elsewhere, it sounds like his former fame had much to do with personal charisma, which meant it waned after his death in old age.Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife to the United States. By the end of the second novella there is something captivating about the way she goes about telling the second half of her story. To the final word Smart refuses to explain herself and has even less interest in justifying her actions; throughout these pages she sits down and weeps more than once, but the defiant testimony of her experiences leaves a sensation that feels rather like a belly laugh in our collective face. Quedé muy sorprendido con esta novela y, por ende, conmigo mismo: tan encantado estaba por su lectura.