'I Write This Sitting in the Kitchen Sink': The Novelist as Observer and Journal-Keeper in Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and William Boyd's Any Human Heart
Keywords:
Dodie Smith, William Boyd, Journal, MemoryAbstract
This paper looks at two novelist-protagonists who keep a journal or writer's diary. The characters' use of a diary to record and transmute their daily experiences into potential fiction mirrors the process by which the novelist adheres closely to reality for creative inspiration, making art out of the seemingly mundane day-to-day life. The paper analyses the use of writer's journals in Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and William Boyd's Any Human Heart, exploring the ways each author represents the importance of journal-keeping in the development of the creative writer.Downloads
References
Primary
Boyd, William. Any Human Heart. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2002.
Boyd, William. Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
Smith, Dodie. I Capture The Castle. London: Red Fox, 2001.
Secondary
Beebe, Maurice. Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts: The Artist as Hero from Goethe to Joyce. New York: New York University Press, 1964.
Blincoe, Nicholas. “History as Farce.” The New Statesman, 1st April, 2002.
Boyd, William. “Nice One, Cyril.” The Guardian, 4th November 2006.
Christie, David. “Any Human Heart.” The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter. Issue 12 (Autumn, 2003).
Eder, Richard. “Evelyn Waugh Kissed Me.” The New York Times, February 16th 2003.
Grove, Valerie. Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith. London: Pimlico, 2002.
Kakutani, Michiko. “Books of the Times; A Witness to a Century, Just Looking Out for Himself.” The New York Times, 14th February 2003.
Penfield, Elizabeth and Nancy Wicker, The Writer’s Roles: Readings With Rhetoric. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1985.
Stewart, Victoria. “Realism, Modernism and the Representation of Memory in Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle,” Studies in the Novel. Vol. 40, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp.328-343.
Tayler, Christopher. “A Bit of a Lush.” London Review of Books. Vol. 24, No. 10 (23rd May, 2003).
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