“Wilfully stopping his ears: the writing of The Novel: A Biography“
Professor Michael Schmidt
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Michael Schmidt must have known that The Novel: a Biography was a project doomed to fail. Yet he started his fourteen year odyssey, sceptical of theory, alert to the various pleasures of reading – and writing. The Daily Beast called the book ‘a delightful tale… that reminds is of exactly why we read’. In the New York Times John Sutherland said, ‘What vindicates Schmidt’s willful stopping of his ears to the irrelevant chatter of academic scholarship is that he himself reads so intelligently and writes so pungently… a herculean literary labor, carried off with swashbuckling style and critical aggression.’
Michael Schmidt was born in Mexico in 1947. He studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford. His most ambitious prose books are Lives of the Poets, The First Poets and The Novel: a biography. A poet and novelist himself, he founded and runs Carcanet Press and PN Review. Until recently he was a professor at Glasgow and Cambridge.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
