Kevin Cryan
MV Fellow
I love Midnight Voices!
Posts: 1144
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Re: Robert Hughes (July 1938 - August 2012) R.I.P.
« Reply #1: 11.08.12 at 10:20 » |
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John Naguton’s recent blog entry Remembering Robert Hughes is a reminder to me why over these many years I've read such a lot of Clive and Robert’s output.
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Somerset Maugham said that before embarking on a new book he read Voltaire’s Candide as a way of cleansing his style. Other writers have used Hemingway or Tom Wolfe in the same way. I have often reached for Robert Hughes or Clive James when feeling jaded or pedestrian, not because I wanted to try and emulate their styles but because I wanted to inhale something of their approach to writing: serious without being pompous; a talent for muscular prose with an inbuilt-capacity to shock or surprise; unwillingness to take the great and the good at their inflated estimations of themselves; and a wonderful capacity for caricature.
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Kevin Cryan
PS
John’s Wikipedia entry has not been updated recently.
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