Penelope Fitzgerald Quote
That was what he wanted to tell his audience at Cambridge. He divided classical satirists into two classes—fierce men starving in garrets, and renouncing popularity and circulation to dwell in tubs, and calm good-livers who tell amusingly the kind of truth that no one has ever denied. But for the present century the right spirit, he believed, was self-satire, the ability to see humor in the constant small defeats of life, and the power to be startled by nothing, however extravagant. The subject, in the end, turned out to be more relevant than it had seemed, as anyone could have told who had heard Eddie and Wilfred laughing together.
Penelope Fitzgerald
That was what he wanted to tell his audience at Cambridge. He divided classical satirists into two classes—fierce men starving in garrets, and renouncing popularity and circulation to dwell in tubs, and calm good-livers who tell amusingly the kind of truth that no one has ever denied. But for the present century the right spirit, he believed, was self-satire, the ability to see humor in the constant small defeats of life, and the power to be startled by nothing, however extravagant. The subject, in the end, turned out to be more relevant than it had seemed, as anyone could have told who had heard Eddie and Wilfred laughing together.
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About Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."