Monday, November 22, 2004

George Gissing

I picked up The Odd Women at the library last night and started it today. An earlier reader had written copious notes in the margin for slightly more than a hundred pages. Did she decide at that point that the book was too depressing to continue with? Did she decide it wasn't one she could use to support her thesis? Or was she an odd woman herself, as Gissing defined the term?

Gissing was born on today's date in 1857. Only one other time have I serendipitously begun a book unknowingly on the author's birthday.

Henry James was a fan of Gissing: "He has the strongest deepest sense of common humanity, of the general struggle and the general grey grim comedy."

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