Lmst

“You ought, Mr Graham, to be the first president of a British Republic.” “I ought, madam, if I had my rights,” he answered sardonically, “to be the king of this country. And what a three weeks that would be!”
—Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday

🎨 “Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham”, Sir John Lavery (1893)

8/18

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian #FordMadoxFord

Portrait of Robert Bontine Cunningham Graham, Sir John Lavery. Oil on canvas, 1893. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. A full-length portrait of a man with dark curly hair, curled moustaches, and a pointed beard. He is dressed in brown, with a long overcoat and shiny knee-high leather riding boots. A reddish-pink scarf, loosely tied around his neck, provides a splash of colour. He holds a cane in his right hand, with his left held behind his back.

Born on this day....

Ford Madox Ford, best known for his novel 'The Good Soldier', considered one of the great novels of literature. His use of flashbacks and the unreliable narrator helped define his pioneering impressionist voice.

'If you’re going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he’d better be real enough that you can smell his breath.'
Ford Madox Ford

#botd #fordmadoxford #birthdayboy #literarybirthdays

top right: colorized photo of Ford Madox Ford; bottom left, sketch of his mother, bottom right: cover to his novel 'The Good SOldier'; centre: photo of his first wife Elsie; background: 'Work' by Ford Madox Brown, Ford's grandfather

#FordMadoxFord #SadestStory #Literature #Bookstodon #ProseReader

The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't.

Rebecca West said of Ford Madox Ford that to embraced by him was "like being the toast under a poached egg." And yet this man got around in his forties and his fifties, undoubtedly buttressed by his reputation rather than any natural charms.

#fordmadoxford #gossip #literary

Ezra Pound's brutal assessment of Ford Madox Ford: "He kept on discovering merit with monotonous regularity." I feel this applies to at least 65% of literary critics today. There's a way to dispense praise with thought and class (see John Leonard) and there's a way to do so while coming across as a bumpkin and a fool.

#books #critics #ezrapound #fordmadoxford

@mjohnharrison

Ah, Bill Nighy, he cannot put a foot wrong. A great actor. And he is such an incredible charmer too, never NOT quietly elevating our human sensitivies in unexpected ways, whenever he speaks.

Indeed, #MJohnHarrison, for you to stand next to #FordMadoxFord is an honor, and to be placed there by Mr Nighy gives that honour an extra unbookish twist. It goes both ways, of course: #BillNighy elevates himself (if that were possible) by his affection for FMF and MJH. Bravo all.

Literarischer #17Dezember

„Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.“

#FordMadoxFord #JosephConradAPersonalRememberance Geburt 1873

Derangedly, I thought I'd try to sketch headshots of each author of a book I finished in 2022. Here's 1-8 (chronologically from when I read them this year). Yeah, the scale's screwy, but at least you don't know what most of 'em look like: #VirginiaWoolf, #DavidThomson, #RamanSehgal, #FordMadoxFord, #GlennKurtz, #ScottMeslow, #ItaloCalvino, and #DonaldHall, for whom I just decided to go with ink. I'll work on the other 49 (!) over the holiday.

#art #amateurartist #book #bookstodon

Pencil and/or ink sketches of authors I've read

The art of storytelling: Ford Madox Ford, born #OTD in 1873, in his great novel The Good Soldier (1915) #writing #storytelling #FordMadoxFord

I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair—a long, sad affair—one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.

Literarischer #17Dezember

„Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.“

#FordMadoxFord #JosephConradAPersonalRememberance Geburt 1873

This is hard!

#7Books to get to know me (fiction only):

- The Medusa Frequency (#RussellHoban)
- A Canticle for Leibowitz (#WalterMiller)
- Through Black Spruce (#JosephBoyden)
- The Good Soldier (#FordMadoxFord)
- The Painted Drum (#LouiseErdrich)
- The Overstory (#RichardPowers)
- The Devils (#Dostoyevesky)

Honourable mention to #AliSmith

The head of Orpheus floating down the river Hebrus to the sea

@blogmywiki #bookstodon #backlisted
#AnthonyBurgess
#LaurenceSterne
#FordMadoxFord
#PenelopeFitzgerald
#JamesJoyce
#Cervantes
#ThomasMann
#MathiasEnard
#VirginiaWoolf
#PGWodehouse

#FordMadoxFord

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