When the book was reissued in the late 1960s, novelistĪngela Carter praised the novel in a Guardian review as “like Madame Bovary blasted by lightning” but later wrote privately to her friend, critic Lorna Sage, that one of her motivations for founding the feminist press Virago was “the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT, exquisite prose though it might contain. The novel is wildly praised as a work of linguistic inventiveness and beauty, but beyond that, responses often divide based on the love affair itself. Depending on whose opinion one trusts, the novel is either “a violent and adroit piece of home-wrecking” ( Cyril Connolly, 1945) or “like saying a tragic, pagan erotic rosary” ( Brigid Brophy, 1966). Waves of disapproval and approbation have trailed By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept since its initial publication. In an essay for Open Letters Monthly, Ingrid Norton called the novel 'a howl of a book, shot through with vivid imagery and ecstatic language, alternately exasperating and invigorating,' noting the range of responses to it: It details the author's passionate affair with the British poet George Barker and might be characterised as a hymn to love and its supremacy above all other emotions and worldly practicalities. In her preface to the 1966 reissue of the book, Brigid Brophy describes it as one of the half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world. It is widely considered to be a classic of the genre.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Weptįile:By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept Cover.jpgīy Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is a novel of prose poetry written by the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart and published in 1945.

By grand central station i sat down