Welsh Journals

Advice to a *Young Writer By ELIZABETH BOWEN I AM very much impressed and interested by this collection of work. There is something arresting about it both in expression and in content. I gather that the stories and other pieces are arranged in chronological order, which I like, as it is a guide to the way the writer's mind (or creative faculty) has been moving. Opening this book of MS. at random, one's eye-which means, of course, one's imagination-is immediately caught by any sentence it strikes, and cannot but read on. This, I think, is one test of writing being really a writer's writing. The first stories, with the sharp brutal twist to the plot in final para- graph of each, have-using the word in high professional sense, not the derogatory sense-an extraordinary efficiency. Breakfast is a Happy Meal in Heaven I like less it doesn't quite "take" with me personally. As against which, The Intruders is vivid and admirably built. It is difficult to criticise so personal a talent; and one already so far formed. (I detest the word "talent" but can think of no other I would not wonder if there were constituents of genius here but it is a genius that will still have to integrate itself, find itself.) I do not want to counsel you, Miss Williams, to do anything that would mean forcing your imagination out of its natural course. I think the increasing fullness in the pieces towards the end of this collection is encouraging even though sometimes it has cost you some loss of the sharp, taut effectiveness of the earlier stories. I like best of all the first chapter of the novel. I don't think this at all necessarily means you should be a novelist rather than a short- storyist but somehow in this chapter as a bit of writing, what I meant by the "fullness" of which you are capable comes out. I like least the play-not because of any particular faults in it as theatre, as to which my own ideas are still very hit-and-miss, but because it is so abstract. That, of course, is my own taste but one's own taste can't quite be cleared out of any attempt at judgment however dis- passionate one may be trying to be.