APS TOGETHER
Day 10
New Grub Street by George GissingChapter 10
November 15, 2023 by Yiyun Li
“She would rather have had him flare into a worthless popularity than flicker down into total extinction.”
There is a bit of Rosamond Vincy from Middlemarch in Amy Reardon, except here Amy’s thinking is much less veiled than Rosamond’s. Or, perhaps another way to put it is that Gissing wrote without any veil.
“How can Mr. Reardon do this if he shuts himself up in the house?”
It’s up to an outsider, Edith Carter, who has no experience with any kind of literary endeavor, to point out astutely that Reardon is bound to fail in his career as a novelist: he’s seeing little, hearing little, feeling some (but not much).
“But what’s the good of talk that leads to nothing?”
“It’s a bit of real life.”
“Yes, but it has no market value. You may write what you like, so long as people are willing to read you.”
A conversation that happens in every generation of writers. It’s refreshing to know that no one is spared.
