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Title details for What W. H. Auden Can Do for You by Alexander McCall Smith - Available

What W. H. Auden Can Do for You

by Alexander McCall Smith
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Bestselling novelist Alexander McCall Smith's charming account of how the poet W. H. Auden has helped guide his life—and how he might guide yours, too
When facing a moral dilemma, Isabel Dalhousie—Edinburgh philosopher, amateur detective, and title character of a series of novels by best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith—often refers to the great twentieth-century poet W. H. Auden. This is no accident: McCall Smith has long been fascinated by Auden. Indeed, the novelist, best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, calls the poet not only the greatest literary discovery of his life but also the best of guides on how to live. In this book, McCall Smith has written a charming personal account about what Auden has done for him—and what he just might do for you.
Part self-portrait, part literary appreciation, the book tells how McCall Smith first came across the poet's work in the 1970s, while teaching law in Belfast, a violently divided city where Auden's "September 1, 1939," a poem about the outbreak of World War II, strongly resonated. McCall Smith goes on to reveal how his life has related to and been inspired by other Auden poems ever since. For example, he describes how he has found an invaluable reflection on life's transience in "As I Walked Out One Evening," while "The More Loving One" has provided an instructive meditation on unrequited love. McCall Smith shows how Auden can speak to us throughout life, suggesting how, despite difficulties and change, we can celebrate understanding, acceptance, and love for others.
An enchanting story about how art can help us live, this book will appeal to McCall Smith's fans and anyone curious about Auden.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 22, 2013

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781400847976
      • File size: 1922 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781400847976
      • File size: 3006 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      August 15, 2013
      A beloved author waxes poetic on an unlikely muse: the poet W.H. Auden. Poetry probably isn't the first word to come to mind when thinking about McCall Smith's work. A lawyer by training (and the author of Botswana's only published legal text), he is best known for his wildly popular commercial mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. However, as he reveals in this slim, category-defying volume, Auden has had a profound impact not only on McCall Smith's work, but his life as a whole. His succinct ode to the celebrated British poet is not a memoir, though he includes a few moments from his own life--e.g., how he discovered Auden as a student in Belfast and how he began to understand him reading Bucolics on the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. Nor is the book a biography, though there are some charming details about Auden's life as well--one particular story about his atrocious housekeeping skills is impossible to forget. McCall Smith is adamant that the book should not be read as criticism, as Auden's body of work has been analyzed in detail by countless literary scholars, though he spends much of the text taking readers (rather haphazardly) through some of the major themes of Auden's poetry. If anything, though, the book could best be called an argument for Auden, a defense of his work, and a simple case for people to continue to pay attention to this particular writer. As McCall Smith writes early on, "I believe that reading the work of W.H. Auden may make a difference to one's life." A lovely yet overstretched article or essay topic; there's earnest enthusiasm aplenty but not enough else to support a full book.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      October 1, 2013
      If you're a fan of McCall Smith's, you know that he's a fan of W. H. Auden. His two series set in EdinburghScotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novelshave characters who frequently quote Auden. In this installment of the Writers on Writers series, McCall Smith, with a wink to Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life (1998), sets out to speak directly about what Auden has meant to him and how readers who have never read the poet can be enriched by his work. McCall Smith is marvelous in describing scenes from his own life that were made radiant or understandable by Auden's poetry. He is less successful, except in a general poetry can change your life way, in relating Auden to new readers. This book wanders quite a bit, and it certainly won't generate Auden converts, but it will help both Auden and McCall Smith fans understand the themes and values of both.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
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  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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