![]() One of the novels – The Transit of Venus (1980) – is a masterpiece that has earned her the status of a major writer rather than merely a distinguished one. As she once remarked to me, were Virgil to sail into its bay today, he would recognize all the lineaments of his adoptive city.ĭuring her lifetime Shirley Hazzard published four novels, two collections of short stories, and six non-fiction books. What she prized above all about Naples was its unaltered landscape. That aversion also accounts for her attachment to the city of Naples, about which she wrote so eloquently and where she owned a home. Given how many tumultuous and destructive transformations the world underwent during her lifetime, one can understand Hazzard’s aversion to change. ![]() She stopped in her tracks, put her hand on my arm, and declared: ‘I hate change.’ ![]() ![]() I mentioned something about a place that had changed. (For half a century, both with and without her husband Francis Steegmuller, she stayed in the same room at the Hassler Hotel whenever she was in Rome, and only occasionally did she and I ever dine at a restaurant other than Otello when we got together in Rome). The only time I heard Shirley Hazzard use the word ‘hate’ during the thirteen years I knew her was one night in Rome when I walked her back to the Hassler Hotel after a dinner at Otello on Via della Croce. ![]()
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