The (Diblos) Notebook

James Merrill

ISBN 10: 1564780643 / ISBN 13: 9781564780645

Published by Dalkey Archive Press, U.S.A., 1994

About this Item

First thus (Dalkey Archive Edition, 1994) originally published by Atheneum (1965); spine smooth and uncreased; text pages tight, clean, fresh, square, and unmarked; durably sewn, on acid-free paper; in truly near-fine condition; afterword for this edition by James Merrill; 151 pp.

Seller Inventory # 003119

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The (Diblos) Notebook
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1564780643
• ISBN 13: 9781564780645
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Best known as a poet, James Merrill is also an accomplished novelist, and in The (Diblos) Notebook artfully lays bare the process of writing a novel. A young American writer keeps a notebook that records at one and the same time a series of events on the Greek island of Diblos in which he is deeply involved, and his attempts to transform these events into a novel. Everything that might be found in such a notebook is used here with great cunning: the false starts that end in the middle of a thought; the endless revisions, canceled out in the search for the right word or phrase; the many approaches and backtrackings as the writer seeks an entrance to the materials through several possible doors; the musings on how the material is to be treated; and the wrestlings with the problem of appearance and assumed reality. The author has written an afterword for this new edition of his 1965 novel.

About the Author

James Merrill (1926-1995) was renowned for the elegance and humane complexity of his work, and is considered the leading lyric poet of his generation. His travels around the world--with their displacements and discoveries--are the subject of many of his poems, but at heart he was an autobiographical poet whose "chronicles of love and loss" tracked the heart as poignantly as a poet ever has. In his huge epic poem on occult themes, in his enthralling narrative poems, or in his small exquisite lyrics, he wrote in a distinctively urbane and engaging voice that made his career one of the wonders of contemporary poetry.