Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame

Humiliation is not, of course, unique to writers. However, the world of letters does seem to offer a near-perfect micro-climate for embarrassment and shame. There is something about the conjunction of high-mindedness and low income that is inherently comic; something about the very idea of deeply private thoughts -- carefully worked and honed into art over the years -- being presented to a public audience of dubious strangers, that strays perilously close to tragedy. These seventy contributions prove it is possible to reverse Auden's dictum: that art is born out of humiliation.

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 04/05/2005
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.04h x 6.66w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780060750923

About the Author
Robertson, Robin: -

Robin Robertson is from the northeast coast of Scotland. He has published five collections of poetry and received a number of accolades, including the Petrarca-Preis, the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Forward Prize in each category. Apart from his translations of Euripides, he has also edited a collection of essays, Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame, and, in 2006, he published The Deleted World, a selection of free English versions of poems by the Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer.