For the first time in my writing career, a book of mine has appeared on various Best Book of the Year lists. I’ve been wondering for a couple of weeks now as to how to respond (at least to myself). I have referenced the various lists and commendations elsewhere on this website, but I felt that this praise for the book, proud and honored as I am of receiving it, needed to be put into perspective (at least to myself). I think of the many good books that didn’t get listed and which deserve to be read. I remember a couple of books of mine that have gone by unnoticed – heartfelt books as worthy to be read, in my view, as Marcelo. So I wanted to say something (at least to myself) about lists and awards and competitions but all I could think of were the words of T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets (East Coker).<\/p>\n
And so each venture
\nIs a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
\nWith shabby equipment always deteriorating
\nIn the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
\nUndisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
\n conquer
\nBy strength and submission, has already been discovered
\nOnce or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
\n hope
\nTo emulate -but there is no competition –
\nThere is only the fight to recover what has been lost
\nAnd found and lost again and again: and now, under
\n conditions
\nThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
\nFor us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the first time in my writing career, a book of mine has appeared on various Best Book of the Year lists. I’ve been wondering for a couple of weeks now as to how to respond (at least to myself). I have referenced the various lists and commendations elsewhere on this website, but I felt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,24,26,25,27,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-book-of-the-year","category-competition","category-praise","category-t-s-eliot","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}