Tag: autobiography

Lightly Child, Lightly.

~ Live & Learn ~ 27 Comments

As you embark on something like this, as you comb through the years, you are confronted with something like an identity parade of former selves. Here they come, shuffling into the white room, in front of the black horizontal bars, all dressed differently (up until around the age of 40 at any rate), all with slightly different haircuts, different ideas about the world, all awkwardly taking their place in the line-up and squinting at the two-way glass. Aspects of all these personas have been jettisoned along the way to get you to whoever you are now. The Usual Rejects. Some of these old versions of you will be more familiar than others, but, for most of us, they will all be shuffling around twitchily to some degree or other. Guilty. How do you rate these old selves? Look back ten or fifteen or twenty years. What was that guy like? How would you rank them in the pantheon of former selves? […]

But, still, here they both are, next to each other in the line-up, squinting into the glare, taking their turn stepping forward – ‘OK, you deadbeats. Start talking.’ Some of them you just want to fetch a mug of tea for. To roll out the good cop, the guy who will say, ‘Hey, you were young, don’t be too hard on yourself kid.’ But there are others, the real offenders, who you want to grab by the lapels and scream, ‘Are you kidding me with this shit?’ You want to reach back through the years and drag them down to the cells, where you will turn off the recording equipment and get busy with the rubber pipe and the rolled telephone book.

Because that’s what it feels like to me, the memoir. A forced confession.

― John Niven, O Brother (Canongate Books, August 24, 2023)

Notes:

  • Book Review & Portrait of John Niven via Herald Scotland: “Author John Niven on his moving family memoir O Brother”  August 19 2023
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Gaffe

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funny-life-mistake-autobiography

Source: Living in Maine

Chronicles of Wasted Time: Number 1.

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Malcolm-muggeridge

Michael Wade @ Execupundit shared his top 10 list of Bios and Auto-Bios.  I dove into #1 on his list: Chronicles of Wasted Time: Number 1. The Green Stick by Malcolm Muggeridge. I had never heard of Muggeridge.

A wonderful obit in the NY Times describes Muggeridge (1903-1990) as a prolific British journalist, author, satirist and caustic social critic. “He delightedly described Cambridge, where he received a master’s degree, as “a place of infinite tedium,” and in the mid-1960’s his caustic attacks on the British monarchy (“Does England Really Need a Queen?“) lost him several writing jobs and nearly ended his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation. His opinion of world leaders was summed up pithily: “Everything that politicians say is without exception void — utterly empty”…Consistent with his egalitarian socialist beliefs, the elder Mr. Muggeridge refused to send his sons to Eton or Harrow or Charter House, but rather to local elementary and secondary schools. These were presided over, Mr. Muggeridge recalled later, by a “bizarre collection of aged and incompetent teachers” and “I emerged unscathed and largely unlettered.””

Don’t take my word for it, read a few excerpts below and tell me what you think about the quality of Michael’s recommendation: Continue reading “Chronicles of Wasted Time: Number 1.” →