Stafford, Jean (Vol. 7) - Stafford, Jean 1915–
Stafford, Jean 1915–
An American novelist and short story writer, Jean Stafford is respected for her insightful, carefully styled fiction. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
In a decade at which we still prefer to look askance, the work of Jean Stafford has rarely failed to call some attention to itself. Her incisive talent, her style so often distinguished, would indeed merit no less. Yet the attention Miss Stafford has won for her work is not all that one should like it to be: it is the kind of attention that takes her limitations for granted, that makes too much of them by accepting them too readily.
The achievement of Miss Stafford, though still in progress (and though time likes nothing better than to give a critic the lie) has an air both of freshness and orthodoxy. One feels that she has allied herself with a large tradition of the novel, the tradition of Proust and James most markedly, and with a tradition...
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