Vivian Gornick (whose latest book has me enticed) is in L-O-V-E with H.G. Wells.
"When I first read Experiment in Autobiography I loved Wells for the extraordinary directness of his voice (I felt him as a friend speaking openly and without reserve), and I envied him, that he could have lived almost an entire life within the embrace of an unaltered belief in the coming of the world state, while I have had to wander in the wilderness, seeing all such hopes repeatedly smashed underfoot. But as I have re-read the book over the years I have come to cherish him, not only becaus ehe grew wise but because until the very end of his life he was still trying to make sense of things."
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