WHEN I'M WEARY...

Always go back to DH Lawrence. There was a mind who knew his own mind. And what a wonderful writer. There is so much trash around these days that you start to smell disgusting just by reading it. That's the moment when you ought to return to the Classics. I forgot that this was the way I read from childhood onwards. An Agatha Christie, whom I adored, followed by a Lawrence, then another Agatha, followed by a Dostoyevsky, another Agatha, followed by a Greene and so on and so on. I've been reorganising the books, to get some out of the way and others into a safer place, when I came across Rebecca. Now Daphne du Maurier was a friend of friends of mine. Indeed, Manderley was based on the Cornish home of one of my core group of close friends. His dad, Eton-educated, became a country and western singer and then, with horrible physical ailments, died by jumping in front of a London train. Do you need to know this? Probably not. We all went to a gathering in London to support my friend. I had known for a long time the connection with du Maurier. It was only today, in sorting my books, that I started to read Rebecca once again. WOW. Give me that first chapter any day. Not a single wasted word. No repetition. Any noun is described with a sentence/action/reason for being there. If you read certain modern literary gods you will know how they love to repeat a phrase...i mean, just love to repeat a phrase, a phrase to be repeated just like love in repeating the phrase. NOT SO WITH DAPHNE. What a beautiful writer. Thought I'd share this with you. As all writing experts will tell you: READ, READ AND READ AGAIN. But please read the classics. Daphne, I salute you.