Word: wyck
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...World of Washington Irving, by Van Wyck Brooks, tells of a period in American history comparable to the present, when Parson Weems hawked books from his spring wagon and the people were avid for learning. Part of its value is that, in a time when there are not enough new books of quality to satisfy the demand, it directs readers to many excellent, forgotten U.S. writers...
...Author. Van Wyck Brooks's literary career began with a trip to England when he was twelve. Born in Plainfield, NJ. in 1886, the son of a New York stockbroker, he read Ruskin in England, dreamed of himself writing a history of painting some day. He never wrote it, and his first published work, like that of many of his generation, appeared in St. Nicholas...
...American writers had fallen so far short of the possibilities of their genius. As he worked on his biographies of Mark Twain and Henry James, finding more & more evidence of the personal tragedies of individual writers, and more & more signs of the faltering of their boldest ventures, Van Wyck Brooks produced studies of intellectual failure which were as terrifying to creative writers as the horror stories...
...Little Colonel. Stephen Vincent Benét once called Van Wyck Brooks the little colonel of literature. Now 58, a ruddy-faced, grey-mustached man of middle height, he is as straight as an old soldier, somewhat resembles one in his severely simple working life and the spare common sense of his words. With the earnings of The Flowering of New England he built a square white brick house on the top of an isolated hill four miles from Westport, Conn. It has high ceilings, soft-toned walls, many windows, large rooms, a view of the Sound, books, comfortable chairs...
There Van Wyck Brooks awakens early each morning, reads before breakfast, writes from 7:30 till midday, reads again in the afternoon. He uses a quart of black ink a year, has trouble getting the kind he likes. He is as nervous about starting each new book as he was about the first one. He follows no pattern in his writing, never outlines his work, does not know until he is half-finished with a book what form it is going to take. He is now halfway through the reading for the next volume of his history, which will deal...