On new book and Keats’ influence on FSF
Just a brief aside: if you want to buy my new book, and if you do G– help you, it is listed under the author name of E.C. Walsh on Amazon even though the cover shows my full first name of Edmund.
Also read an in interesting book review today from The Wall Street Journal about a new book analyzing the influence of early 19th-century romantic poet John Keats on F.S. Fitzgerald, who titled his last full novel off of a line from a Keats poem, Tender is the Night. The book is called Bright Star, Green Light and appears to quote the famous Keats line, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” (My joke as a teenager was “A thing of beauty is a toy forever”). But seriously the Keats line hints at Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy in The Great Gatsby.
One of my grad school classmates was irritated by the focus of literary critics on “influence”. But it matters. Even the famously independent Emily Dickinson was somewhat influenced by Keats. One of my professors, pointing out Keats died in his mid-20s, argued what you leave behind is what matters. Quality before quantity.