Robert Graves' Mythologies
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
They sum up as follows: "Aside from a few devotees of the White Goddess, no one rates Graves as a prophet these days, but his books, some of them at least, are too good to be left “lying about.” The best of them should be picked up and read. We should be grateful that it’s easier than ever to rediscover Graves and grant his work the attention it deserves."
“...risking his reputation on cranky ideas, for revising masterpieces and making them worse, for alienating friends and abandoning family.”
“...self-destructive impulses led Graves to think he could safely inhabit a household comprising himself, his wife Nancy, his lover Laura Riding, his wife’s lover Geoffrey Taylor, and several children. Their “quadrilateral” ended poorly, with Graves hurling himself from a third-story window in pursuit and imitation of Riding, who had just thrown herself from the fourth floor.”
“Perhaps he expected that someone, someday would do for him what he had once done for the Roman emperor Claudius...”
“...a few on the esoteric and occult fringes still agree with him.”
“... Graves, never humble, characterized the “inspiration” that descended upon him...”
“Can we read Graves without looking to the moon?”
“When writing fiction, he almost invariably constructs so sturdy a framework of fact, theory, conjecture, and supposition that the conventional pleasures of fiction are elided.”
“Perhaps Nausicaa is Graves’s self-portrait as ruthless artist.”
“Graves is a great accumulator of incidental detail and memorable anecdotes but, as ever, he’s an indifferent analyst of character.”
“Dozens of Graves’s books have little hope of emerging from the lead casket of obscurity.”