Life
His upbringing was in a landed Catholic family in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. This later provided material for his first experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down (1966). The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and was later adapted as a BBC television film by British playwright Harold Pinter, in association with RTÉ.
His career before writing started in the early 1950s, when he worked in London as a copywriter for Domas Advertising. While in London he met John Wright of John Wright's Marionette Co, and from 1958 to 1960 he worked as a puppeteer in Europe, South Africa and what was then Rhodesia. His last job before writing was working as a scriptwriter with the Filmlets, and advertising firm in Johannesburg.
His second major novel, Balcony of Europe(Taking its name from the village where he lived in Andalusia), utilizes Spanish and Irish settings and employs various languages, primarily Spanish and different English dialects(Irish, American, English). The novel was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker prize. The book has divided critics with some regarding the book as illusive and odd fitting in the canon of Higgins' major work. However the book has a small cult following(implying a "lengthly and irrational devotion") especially among fellow writers, commending the books originality and 'extraordinary range of styles'.
Later major novels include widely acclaimed "Bornholm Night Ferry" and "Lions of the Grunwald". Various writings have been collected and reprinted by the Dalkey Archive Press, including his three-volume autobiography, A Bestiary, and a collection of fiction, Flotsam and Jetsam, both of which demonstrate his wide erudition and his experience of life and travel in South Africa, Germany and London which gives his writing a largely cosmopolitan feel, utilizing a range of European languages in turns of phrase.
Read more about this topic: Aidan Higgins
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Love’s boat has been shattered against the life of everyday. You and I are quits, and it’s useless to draw up a list of mutual hurts, sorrows, and pains.”
—Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)