“The novel may indeed be dying,” declared the critic Robert Scholes, “but we need not fear for the future. Lawrence, among other modernist forebears. He was confidently placed in the big shoes of Joyce, Proust, Henry Miller, and D. Almost at once the novel established an outlandish reputation for Durrell, previously known for a precocious first novel and some sublime travel writing. Yet half a century ago, when Justine appeared, it elicited a rush of critical superlatives that announced the birth of a literary classic. The well of memory tends to run dry about there, leaving only the wistful fragrance of the little remembered but not quite forgotten. Speak the name Lawrence Durrell, as I have been doing recently, and you will have little trouble prompting the title of his masterwork, the four-novel cycle he called “The Alexandria Quartet.” Yes, everyone read it back when.
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