<> Boyd Letters Boyd Estate 1966 Apr 14th Linen Hall Library Wednesday, March 16, 2016 TIFF Boyd050 Letter Friel, Doyle English https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/content/boyd050 Linen Hall Library Linen Hall Library Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/sites/default/files/Boyd050_4.jpg LHL Archive 28 Rosetta Avenue, BELFAST, 7. 14th April, 1966. The Editor, The Irish Times, Westmoreland Street, DUBLIN. Sir: Your review last Saturday of Brian Friel's The Gold in the Sea, though not unfavourable in tone, strikes me as distinctly odd in judgement. Your reviewer compares Mr.Friel's work to Lynn Doyle’s, a comparison which, I suggest, betrays an imperfect understanding of both writers. Doyle was, of course, an admirable craftsman, but his qualities are not those of Mr.Friel's. Miss Edna O'Brien and other distinguished short story writers have compared Mr.Friel’s art with that of Chekov: I suspect they know what they are talking about. Certainly Mr.Friel's best stories have 'an exceedingly complex charm, deriving from a literary art which is unquestionably purer, more essential, more lyrical, more concentrated than the novel.' The quotation is from Moravia, and It seems to me relevant to Mr.Friel's art. (John Boyd) Text