Maurice Denton Welch était un écrivain et peintre anglo-américain, admiré pour sa prose vivide et ses descriptions précises. Son œuvre se caractérise par un style distinctif qui plonge le lecteur dans le récit. Welch capture magistralement l'atmosphère et l'émotion des personnages. Son écriture est appréciée pour son originalité et sa profondeur.
In the last eight years of his life - and he died when he was only thirty- three - Denton Welch wrote three novels, umpteen short stories, hundreds of poems, and - between 1942 and 1948, a profoundly personal and moving journal that recorded his swift maturity into a writer of genius.
'Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me' Alan Bennett 'Vivid ... surprising ... an exquisite balance of pain and beauty' Guardian Orvil Pym does not fit in. A waifish, eccentric, sensitive fifteen-year-old, he hates school and longs to be alone. Spending his Summer holidays in a genteel Surrey hotel with his mysterious father and two brothers who don't understand him, he explores ancient churches, spies on a man rowing in the river and collects antiques, escaping into his own singular aesthetic world. First published in 1945, this is an unforgettable portrayal of a young man's sensuous coming-of-age. 'A heightened, sensual journey ... it is Orvil's vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble ... beautifully odd ... spectacular' Independent
At the age of twenty, the novelist Denton Welch suffered a cycling accident that left him partially paralyzed; the injuries that he sustained were to leave him in almost constant pain for the rest of his life, as well as bestowing upon him the spinal tuberculosis that would kill him at the age of 33. A Voice Through a Cloud--increasingly regarded as Welch's masterpiece--is his account of this accident and the period of convalescence soon after. The unsparing chronicle of the world of a hospital patient--riddled with anger, boredom, almost unbearable stabs of pain and sharp flashes of humour
The third volume in Enitharmon’s Denton Welch series is his autobiographical novella I Left My Grandfather’s House, written in 1943, first published posthumously in 1958 and only briefly in print since. In the novella Welch recounts a walking tour undertaken in southern England ten years before, while he was a painting student at the Goldsmiths’ School of Art. His many adventures along the way are described with a characteristic lyricism and energy, as well as with a sense of nostalgia not only for the pre-war world, but also for the innocent enjoyment of existence in the years before Welch was permanently disabled by a life-threatening accident. As Edmund White has written: ‘Welch has the power to generate interest out of even the most meagre materials. He had this gift from the beginning but suffering and illness refined it into a white-hot flame.’
Denton Welch's first novel Maiden Voyage (1946) recounts Welch's adventures as a boy when, after running away from his English public school, he was sent to Shanghai to live with his father for a year. Welch's keen observations - of his tortured relationship with his distant father, and the colonial milieu of pre-war China - dominate this painfully honest narrative. Exact Change's publication of Maiden Voyage marks the bringing back into print of all three of Denton Welch's novels, a cause for celebration among the growing number of fans who have embraced his beautiful and courageous writing.
Zweitausendeins
