They Died Too Young

[Anonymous]

Been reading J.G. Farrell's "Troubles", set in a vast hotel in Co. Wexford during the War of Independence (1919-21) - it's superb (as I said on the Co Wexford thread) - deftly avoiding both Big House and Oirish cliches. It reads like an Anthony Powell or Evelyn Waugh novel, except sadder and somehow more luminous. THe hotel becomes this vast, absurd labyrinth of decay, which oddly enough echoes of Borges.

Picked up his "The Siege of Krishnapur" which won the Booker a while back. Farrell died aged 44 in 1979, in a fishing accident in Co. Cork (where he had only moved four months before)

Lots of obvious authors/artists/musicians (especially musicians) who died Too Young, any other lesser known ones. Another vote of mine would be Nikolai Gogol, who had only completed part one of Dead Souls, although Dead Souls was shaping up as a didactic Russian-soul-a-thon. But the author of "The Overcoat" and "The Nose" really should have lived longer.

 

[Anonymous]

Henri Alain - Fournier, who was 27 when he was killed, only wrote one novel. Entitled Le Grand Meaulnes it was published in 1913.

The book is also sometimes known (in English) as The Lost Domain

When Alain-Fournier was killed in battle on the Meuse in 1914, he left behind Le Grand Meaulnes, a novel of wistful enchantment. The tale is recounted by François Seurel, whose father heads the village school where Augustin Meaulnes comes to board. A tall, somber youth of 17, he instantly becomes the class ringleader, and is soon known as le grand Meaulnes. When the youth sets off on an impetuous errand of a few hours and doesn't return for several days, events take a darker turn.

After Meaulnes's reappearance, Seurel notices his companion's unrest, and tries to uncover its source. He wakes in the midwinter nights to find Meaulnes pacing the room "like someone rummaging about in his memory, sorting out scraps." Meaulnes remains disconsolate, but finally reveals the nature of his travels, and the strange days of revelry at his unintended destination--the "lost domain" to which he is desperate to return and doesn't know how to find. Seurel rightly guesses that Meaulnes met a young woman there, and that he is in love. "Often afterwards, when he had gone to sleep after trying desperately to recapture that beautiful image, he saw in his dreams a procession of young women who resembled her ... but not one of them was this tall slender girl." The two friends set about retracing Meaulnes's path, and their journeys take them into manhood, when Meaulnes finds at last a way to bring his quest full circle.

Alain-Fournier pairs his tightly twisting plot with a poignant nostalgia. His descriptive powers bring to the reader the sights and sounds--the icy winter winds and rattling carriage wheels--from an earlier time, all the while weaving a brilliant affirmation of loyalty and lasting friendship. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland

- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140182829/ref=ase_bridgebooks/002-6740362-5459267

Such a beautiful book. Which also sometimes reads, to me, almost like a ghosts story.