It is self-aware and free of any of the conventional trappings, which is why it has lasted so well: it can even be said to have aged wonderfully, to have come into its own in our day. He is honest even about the very fact of composition, mindful of the necessary artifice in reconstructing events from his youth. It is one of the most remarkable memoirs ever composed, a Tristram Shandy of self-disclosure: impish, rambling, outrageous, parenthetical, contradictory, obsessional, repetitive, occasionally tiresome, but shot through with wit and ferocious, lacerating honesty. In 2002 his words are as fresh and as thrilling as if he were sitting by your side, talking excitedly into your ear. The idea of writing his autobiography appeals to him, "but the terrible quantity of Is and Mes! That would be enough to put the most well-disposed reader's back up." He doubts anyone will want to read the work, so he bequeaths it to posterity, to the reader of 1880, or of 1935 - for only then, he feels, will people begin to understand him. You begin to get the picture immediately: of a powerfully opinionated and passionate intellect, harsh on everyone, but no less harsh on himself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |