Thursday, August 22, 2019

Dennis Cooper on Ronald Firbank

During last night's discussion—ably facilitated by Robert Muir—of Ronald Firbank's 1926 novella, Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli, several of us tried to identify modern LGBTQ writers Firbank has influenced. Philip Clark helpfully cited Dennis Cooper and pointed us to the author's blog, where Cooper posted the following essay in November 2017.

Wide-ranging, thorough and delightful, including a comparison of Firbank with James Joyce (!), the piece is well worth perusing even if you're not a fan of Firbank's purple prose. Which, honesty compels me to say, none of us was, though most of us were glad for the opportunity to read this work.

That said, I do subscribe to Cooper's assessment:

"Firbank is with doubt a minor writer (whether Joyce, for all his present 'reclame', is a major one, is a question which can only be settled by posterity), but one who, for the most part, achieved precisely what he set out to do."

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