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It is the spring of 1963. The young Quebec author, Marie-Claire Blais, has just won a coveted Guggenheim fellowship. She chooses Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the place where she will begin her writer's apprenticeship with her mentor, Edmund Wilson. American Notebooks is much more than a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer. An album of exquisitely drawn literary portraits of companions, intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists and social activists of the period: Edmund and Elena Wilson, Mary Meigs, Maud Morgan, Barbara Deming, Truman Capote, her first Quebec publisher, now Senator, Jacques Hebert, and many others, it also introduces many of the real life personalities who have inspired her fictional characters.
About the author
Born in 1939 in Québec, Marie-Claire Blais continues to dominate the literary landscape. Having published her first novel at the age of twenty, she has gone on to publish twenty novels to date in France and Quebec-all of which have been translated into English-as well as five plays and several collections of poetry. All of her writings have met with international acclaim.
Talon has published her
American Notebooks, a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer.
Winner of the Prix Médicis, the Prix Belgo-Canadien, the Prix France-Québec, and many others, Blais continues to devote herself to work that is proud and exacting. Most recently, she has been invited, as one of the very few foreigners allowed, to join Belgium's Academy of French Language and Literature.
Summary
It is the spring of 1963. The young Quebec author Marie-Claire Blais, bursting with energy and talent, has just won a coveted Guggenheim fellowship. She chooses Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the place where she will begin her writer’s apprenticeship with her mentor, Edmund Wilson.
American Notebooks is much more than a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer. An album of exquisitely drawn literary portraits of companions, intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists and social activists of the period—Edmund and Elena Wilson; Mary Meigs; Maud Maugan; Barbara Deming; Truman Capote; Jacques Hébert, her first Quebec publisher, then senator; and many others—it also introduces many of the real life personalities who have inspired her fictional characters.
