I can still write sentences and paragraphs, but for some five or six years now I haven’t been able to write books. Maybe after more than thirty of them the well has at last run dry. Maybe, age eighty, I no longer have the right kind of energy. Maybe the time has come to simply stop. Whatever the reason, at least for the moment, the sweet birds no longer sing.Frederick Buechner in the introduction to Yellow Leaves
5 comments:
Oh, how sad.
'in the introduction to Yellow Leaves'... so he did write more?
I don't have the book ... (though I do have another $25 gift certificate to Amazon :-).
I think it is a collecgtion of shorter things, bits and pieces. Hence his explanation of why it's not a full length book.
Buechner was so important to my intellectual development and ongoing conversion that I just found this 'giving over of his power,' so to speak, really melancholoy.
On the other hand, he's going to leave this life having written over 30 books.
One or two of them might even survive for a couple dozen years! Maybe Bebb ... maybe the memoirs.
Lots to think about there.
Jon,
I must tell you that you sparked my love for Buechner. You and Jen gave me THE MAGNIFICENT DEFEAT for Christmas one year.
This reminds me of Wendell Berry in "Thirty More Years."
And a friend that we have that has said, "Sometimes he's just tired of words."
Buechner is a stud and will be missed when he is gone. He is one of my favorite authors. The Big RD bought me "Godric" and I have read anything and everything I can get my hands on ever since.
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