Work
West's first writing was published in 1939, a short story called "99.6." Her early success came from publishing short stories in literary journals.
Much of her work concerns Indiana Quakers, despite the fact she spent much of her life in California. Asked about this in an interview, she said, "I write about Indiana because knowing little about it, I can create it." Comparing herself to other authors who created fictional universes, she remarked:
- "Roth wrote The Breast. Would you ask him how he could do this since he had never been a breast? Adams wrote Watership Down. Would you ask him how he could do this since he admitted his rabbit knowledge came from a book about rabbits? ... And those hobbits!... I am a bigger risk-taker than these others. The Hoosiers can contradict me. No rabbit, hobbit, or breast has been known to speak up in reply to their exploiters."
Her stories, although shaped by her imagination, are loosely based on tales told to her by her mother and grandmother of their life in rural Indiana. The characters in her 1969 book 'Except for Me and Thee' are based on Joshua and Elizabeth Milhous, the great grandparents she shares with President Nixon.
Read more about this topic: Jessamyn West (writer)
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
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—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)