He will hereafter be known (and forgotten) not for what he is, but for the picture that a hurried journalist has given of him. To make a name for oneself in the literary world, it is no longer necessary to write many books. It suffices to have written one that the evening newspapers have talked about and on which the writer’s reputation will henceforth rest.
Ah, the days of morning and evening newspapers... A foreign country, they do things differently there.
(I also find fascinating those early XX century English letters/bios where Londoners send invitations by mail in the morning and get replies after lunch. Take that WhatsApp )
Fascinating in more than one way: I don’t think I’ve ever seen mail delivered on the same day within the same city even when my place of residence had a well-functioning postal service by modern standards. (What I have seen in a particularly egregious case, though, is letters reliably taking a month to traverse a distance that takes me half an hour on foot.)
I've been told that it was once common in the UK to be able to send an early morning letter and have a reply in your letter box by afternoon. Now, I have Post Office workers graffitiing envelopes and changing the type of postage I just paid for once I've left the Post Office, letters going missing regularly, a couple of stamps costs £10, and first class can take a week. It's now got so bad that we hand delivered cards over Christmas.
He will hereafter be known (and forgotten) not for what he is, but for the picture that a hurried journalist has given of him. To make a name for oneself in the literary world, it is no longer necessary to write many books. It suffices to have written one that the evening newspapers have talked about and on which the writer’s reputation will henceforth rest.
Ah, the days of morning and evening newspapers... A foreign country, they do things differently there.
(I also find fascinating those early XX century English letters/bios where Londoners send invitations by mail in the morning and get replies after lunch. Take that WhatsApp )
Absolutely pitiful.