How I Became a Fatalistm

[caroljane]

I recall the day clearly. I was in a playpen in my parents' kitchen. I don't know my age then, except that it was under 5, but I do know that I was too old to be in a playpen. I didn't mind being in there. I think the demise of the playpen is a big loss to the peace of mind of parents, and the creativity of little kids, but I digress.

Into the kitchen came our landlady, Ada Keene, widow of Elijah Keene. I don't know how long "'Lige" had been dead, but Ada did not seem to miss him much at that point, so I suppose it had been a while. On her considerable shoulders she bore the slaughtered carcass of a deer.

Ada and Elijah had wed rather late in life, though a few said it was too soon. They had one daughter, Florence Keene,my future role model.

There is little to be said about deermeat unless you are a chef and can call it venison. The only thing I know about it is that my parents did not enjoy eating it, and did not make me eat it, but that as it was a gracious gift of Ada on whose good side they naturally wished to keep, they ate it. They ate up the whole thing and did everything they could to make it more palatable. It took a long to eat it up, but they just persevered. Stuarts are not quitters. I do not mean of course that they cooked it all for one meal, it took all winter, and a lot of marital compromise.

That evening I encountered Ada when I had been put to play in the yard. More correct to say, she encountered me. "Well, Carol Jane" were her words. "What are you doing out? Isn't it past your bedtime? What's that you're eating, an apple?"

I admitted that it was. I knew it wasn't her apple, it came from Uncle Leonard's tree, so I had comparatively little fear.

"Mind you don't swallow the seeds, now. If you swallow the seeds a whole apple tree will grow down from your stomach and up your throat and choke you. "

How could I ever tell my mother that I had been so foolish, or so sinful, or so stupid, or whatever it was, as to swallow those seeds? That was my first thought. Had I really swallowed them? That was my second.If I had a third thought I don't remember it. I remember a long night of checking my stomach in dread and trying to feel for trunk-roots forcing up my throat. I remember just giving up. If I had swallowed those seeds I had swallowed them. I couldn't unswallow them. I could never explain to my mother, because if I had swallowed them I would be dead, and if I hadn't I would never have to tell her anything about it.

I eventually went to sleep , and I don't remember anything about the next day, or many days from early childhood. I do remember Ada and her considerable hunting skills, which she always said surpassed her husband's (she was right , they did.

I remember the apple seeds which of course I swallowed, who cannot? And the tree which grew up from my stomach and heart and still chokes me, how could it not? And the mother whose judgment I feared and who knew so entirely all that needed to be known,what could I ever have said to her, which I did not?

Edited May 26, 2011 by daunce lynam

[George H. Smith]

Interesting piece. I'm still trying to figure you out. I will let you know if I ever succeed.

Ghs

[caroljane]

Interesting piece. I'm still trying to figure you out. I will let you know if I ever succeed.

Ghs

George, thank you. Please keep trying. I gave up trying years ago, and that someone of your abilities would undertake the task is an honour I do not deserve.

Apologies for the sloppy editing. I just noticed the extra m in the topic title and a missing word in the post. The m is one of the letters still missing from my keyboard and it disappears and reappears at will.

I would never actually write a memoir,(except micromini like this one) though as I said on PM recently I think everybody should write one, and I think that's worth saying again on the the board.

I don't say everyone should publish one. But everyone should write their own life story, it's good for us.

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

George, I haven't checked, but my impression is that you are writing a memoir or autobio. judging from some of your reminiscences here that I have come across, it should be jaw-droppingly interesting, to borrow an adjective from one of my favourite publications, the National Enquirer.

In seriousness, I've been thinking about the process of writing the internal story from memory, and how complex it is. "In the beginning I was born" is about the only absolutely true, incontrovertible sentence one can ever write, it seems to me. And it's already been written. If you've had any stray thoughts along this line, please share.

[BaalChatzaf]

I remember the apple seeds which of course I swallowed, who cannot? And the tree which grew up from my stomach and heart and still chokes me, how could it not? And the mother whose judgment I feared and who knew so entirely all that needed to be known,what could I ever have said to her, which I did not?

For years my mother told me never to swallow my chewing bum. It would cause the sides of my stomach to stick together.

Right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

I remember the apple seeds which of course I swallowed, who cannot? And the tree which grew up from my stomach and heart and still chokes me, how could it not? And the mother whose judgment I feared and who knew so entirely all that needed to be known,what could I ever have said to her, which I did not?

For years my mother told me never to swallow my chewing bum. It would cause the sides of my stomach to stick together.

Right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Good grief, I've never heard that one. What is it with mothers anyway, whatever their education they have this intimate knowledge of the inside of the stomach, and what it's going to do in any possible crcumstance.

This was only one of the informative things Ada told me about my stomach, and she wasn't even my mother, only Florence's.

[william.scherk]

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

I quite like confessionals, as sometime erupt on OL, little vignettes of Look What They Did To Me, especially from George and Ellen. Phil wrote out a few. And in each of the good ones was a tang, a stimulating aftertaste, a moral, an emotion, a moment of truth. In the really good ones you can't quite exactly 'name' that emotion, but you can taste it and you would recognize it again in a flash.

I think you do your good writing in the way an experienced cook does her treats. She can whip them up while yelling at the TV and disciplining the kids, while mentally doing her budget. In your better writing that effortlessness is well-married to the tang, and in the best a sense of grace deepens the good stuff.

I like this one a lot, even if I haven't yet been quite able to name that tang.

[BaalChatzaf]

Good grief, I've never heard that one. What is it with mothers anyway, whatever their education they have this intimate knowledge of the inside of the stomach, and what it's going to do in any possible crcumstance.

You'll put your eye out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

Good grief, I've never heard that one. What is it with mothers anyway, whatever their education they have this intimate knowledge of the inside of the stomach, and what it's going to do in any possible crcumstance.

You'll put your eye out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Your eye? Dear lord, I've never heard that one. There-s a saying that all mothers are Jewish mothers, and Maritime mothers are even worse than that (no offence Bob, you know what I mean). There's a whole book about them, I remember it's hilarious, and utterly true.

Ma once said to me, Carol Jane listen, I've been thinking about this a lot. Maybe I should come and live with you and keep house. You know you'll never learn to keep house, it just isn't in you, and you should be concentrating on working and writing. If you'd just concentrate, you could do anything,the way you could have been valedictorian.

This offer was utterly serious, I knew. But Ma tended to ruthlessly ignore inconvenient elements,when fixed upon a goal.

What about Dad? I asked. Dad was her husband, whom she happened to adore, as did I.

OH yes, she said.

Him.

He'd understand.

Edited May 28, 2011 by daunce lynam

[caroljane]

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

I quite like confessionals, as sometime erupt on OL, little vignettes of Look What They Did To Me, especially from George and Ellen. Phil wrote out a few. And in each of the good ones was a tang, a stimulating aftertaste, a moral, an emotion, a moment of truth. In the really good ones you can't quite exactly 'name' that emotion, but you can taste it and you would recognize it again in a flash.

I think you do your good writing in the way an experienced cook does her treats. She can whip them up while yelling at the TV and disciplining the kids, while mentally doing her budget. In your better writing that effortlessness is well-married to the tang, and in the best a sense of grace deepens the good stuff.

I like this one a lot, even if I haven't yet been quite able to name that tang.

Bill dear, I thought you had forgiven me the forcible sibling adoption --Michael hasn't complained, nor have any of the others.You forgave me worse on the dear lamented rabbit farm, after all.

You don't know what a day I've had. First Michael J Fox (BORING CANADIAN ALERT! Rational readers skip to next paragraph) gets the order of Canada and tremblingly speaks of Canadianness and we all know what he means. Then I read an article about Mark Chipman in the Post, and we're getting the Jets back. And yesterday right here twin kittens -brother and sister- who were taped into a box and thrown in the garbage by some nameless brute, were rescued by a conscientious park worker, on his lunch break.

Then you hit me dead-on in the vanity spot, somehow knowing in that vast landscape of ignorance, false confidence aand actual knowledge, exactly where it is. Which is more than I know.

Pushed over the brink, I intend to blat my eyes out for the rest of the evening, and I intend to enjoy it.

[George H. Smith]

Interesting piece. I'm still trying to figure you out. I will let you know if I ever succeed.

Ghs

George, thank you. Please keep trying. I gave up trying years ago, and that someone of your abilities would undertake the task is an honour I do not deserve.

Apologies for the sloppy editing. I just noticed the extra m in the topic title and a missing word in the post. The m is one of the letters still missing from my keyboard and it disappears and reappears at will.

I would never actually write a memoir,(except micromini like this one) though as I said on PM recently I think everybody should write one, and I think that's worth saying again on the the board.

I don't say everyone should publish one. But everyone should write their own life story, it's good for us.

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

George, I haven't checked, but my impression is that you are writing a memoir or autobio. judging from some of your reminiscences here that I have come across, it should be jaw-droppingly interesting, to borrow an adjective from one of my favourite publications, the National Enquirer.

In seriousness, I've been thinking about the process of writing the internal story from memory, and how complex it is. "In the beginning I was born" is about the only absolutely true, incontrovertible sentence one can ever write, it seems to me. And it's already been written. If you've had any stray thoughts along this line, please share.

I discussed my plans for an autobiography -- Sex, Drugs, and Philosophy: In Pursuit of a Hedonistic Life -- in the plagiarism thread; and though I wrote some fragments and notes at that time, I realistically don't know if I shall ever complete it. The main problem here is failure of nerve. There would be no point in writing such a book unless it were brutally honest -- unless, that is, it contains both the pros and cons of the type of life I decided to live while in my early twenties -- and dredging up all those memories would mean reliving some very painful events.

Writing an autobiography is a tricky matter. Unless you are so famous that enough people are inherently interested in your life, most people don't really care about what you did. Autobiographies are typically apologies (in the sense of a justification or defense of one's actions), and this has led some historians to claim that autobiographies should not even be classified as "history," given how unreliable and biased they are. I tend to agree with this, to a point, but I would argue that the best autobiographies are largely internal accounts. That is to say, they largely focus on the thoughts and emotions of the writer; and, when well done, they can qualify as good, or even great, literature, if not as accurate history.

An internal autobiography requires a certain type of mind, namely, one that is intensely introspective. Relatively few political or military figures have developed this ability, which is why I usually find the autobiographies they write to be boring. Among the writers who did have this ability, and who were able to translate their memories into writing, I would include Augustine, Rousseau, Thomas De Quincey, J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and George Orwell. (Victorians tended to write excellent autobiographies, probably because many of them were pathologically introspective, which is a trait I identify with.)

Herbert Spencer pinpointed the basic problem in the preface to his massive, two-volume work, An Autobiography. An autobiography, Spencer wrote, is necessarily "egotistic, because it exhibits a person who is "continually talking about himself" -- which means that it will be "inevitably defective as lacking facts of importance, and still more as giving imperfect or untrue interpretations of those facts which it contains." Spencer concludes: "The reader has to discount the impression produced as well as he can."

Another writer who was acutely aware of the problems involved was J.J. Rousseau, in The Confessions. He was brutally honest about himself to a degree that few modern writers would dare to be; e.g., he discusses his obsession with being sexually dominated by a woman and his compulsion to expose himself. Rousseau notes that, even as an adult, he was "still a child in many ways." He further observes that "objects generally make less impression on me than does the memory of them," which is why the events of his childhood were more relevant to explaining his character than the events of his later life. Rousseau continues:

I should like in some way to make my soul transparent to the reader's eye, and for that purpose I am trying to present it from all points of view, to show it in all lights, and to contrive that none of its movements shall escape his notice, so that he may judge for himself of the principle which has produced them.

If I made myself responsible for the result and said to him, 'Such is my character,' he might suppose, if not that I am deceiving him, that at least I am deceiving myself. But by relating to him in simple detail all that has happened to me, all that I have done, all that I have felt, I cannot lead him into error, unless willfully; and even if I wish to, I shall not easily succeed by this method. His task it to assemble those elements and to assess the being who is made up of them. The summing-up must be his, and if he comes to wrong conclusions, the fault will be of his own making. But, with this in view, it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well. It is not for me to judge the relative importance of events; I must relate them all, and leave the selection to him. That is the task to which I have devoted myself up to this point with all my courage.... (Penguin Books ed., trans. JM. Cohen, pp. 169-70).

More, much more, could be said on this topic, but I don't know how much interest OLers have in autobiographies and the problems involved in writing them. I will therefore stop for now.

Ghs

[caroljane]

Interesting piece. I'm still trying to figure you out. I will let you know if I ever succeed.

Ghs

George, thank you. Please keep trying. I gave up trying years ago, and that someone of your abilities would undertake the task is an honour I do not deserve.

Apologies for the sloppy editing. I just noticed the extra m in the topic title and a missing word in the post. The m is one of the letters still missing from my keyboard and it disappears and reappears at will.

I would never actually write a memoir,(except micromini like this one) though as I said on PM recently I think everybody should write one, and I think that's worth saying again on the the board.

I don't say everyone should publish one. But everyone should write their own life story, it's good for us.

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

George, I haven't checked, but my impression is that you are writing a memoir or autobio. judging from some of your reminiscences here that I have come across, it should be jaw-droppingly interesting, to borrow an adjective from one of my favourite publications, the National Enquirer.

In seriousness, I've been thinking about the process of writing the internal story from memory, and how complex it is. "In the beginning I was born" is about the only absolutely true, incontrovertible sentence one can ever write, it seems to me. And it's already been written. If you've had any stray thoughts along this line, please share.

I discussed my plans for an autobiography -- Sex, Drugs, and Philosophy: In Pursuit of a Hedonistic Life -- in the plagiarism thread; and though I wrote some fragments and notes at that time, I realistically don't know if I shall ever complete it. The main problem here is failure of nerve. There would be no point in writing such a book unless it were brutally honest -- unless, that is, it contains both the pros and cons of the type of life I decided to live while in my early twenties -- and dredging up all those memories would mean reliving some very painful events.

Writing an autobiography is a tricky matter. Unless you are so famous that enough people are inherently interested in your life, most people don't really care about what you did. Autobiographies are typically apologies (in the sense of a justification or defense of one's actions), and this has led some historians to claim that autobiographies should not even be classified as "history," given how unreliable and biased they are. I tend to agree with this, to a point, but I would argue that the best autobiographies are largely internal accounts. That is to say, they largely focus on the thoughts and emotions of the writer; and, when well done, they can qualify as good, or even great, literature, if not as accurate history.

An internal autobiography requires a certain type of mind, namely, one that is intensely introspective. Relatively few political or military figures have developed this ability, which is why I usually find the autobiographies they write to be boring. Among the writers who did have this ability, and who were able to translate their memories into writing, I would include Augustine, Rousseau, Thomas De Quincey, J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and George Orwell. (Victorians tended to write excellent autobiographies, probably because many of them were pathologically introspective, which is a trait I identify with.)

Herbert Spencer pinpointed the basic problem in the preface to his massive, two-volume work, An Autobiography. An autobiography, Spencer wrote, is necessarily "egotistic, because it exhibits a person who is "continually talking about himself" -- which means that it will be "inevitably defective as lacking facts of importance, and still more as giving imperfect or untrue interpretations of those facts which it contains." Spencer concludes: "The reader has to discount the impression produced as well as he can."

Another writer who was acutely aware of the problems involved was J.J. Rousseau, in The Confessions. He was brutally honest about himself to a degree that few if any modern writers would dare to be; e.g., he discusses his obsession with being sexually dominated by a woman and his compulsion to expose himself. Rousseau notes that, even as an adult, he was "still a child in many ways." He further observes that "objects generally make less impression on me than does the memory of them," which is why the events of his childhood were more relevant to explaining his character than the events of his later life. Rousseau continues:

I should like in some way to make my soul transparent to the reader's eye, and for that purpose I am trying to present it from all points of view, to show it in all lights, and to contrive that none of its movements shall escape his notice, so that he may judge for himself of the principle which has produced them.

If I made myself responsible for the result and said to him, 'Such is my character,' he might suppose, if not that I am deceiving him, that at least I am deceiving myself. But by relating to him in simple detail all that has happened to me, all that I have done, all that I have felt, I cannot lead him into error, unless willfully; and even if I wish to, I shall not easily succeed by this method. His task it to assemble those elements and to assess the being who is made up of them. The summing-up must be his, and if he comes to wrong conclusions, the fault will be of his own making. But, with this in view, it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well. It is not for me to judge the relative importance of events; I must relate them all, and leave the selection to him. That is the task to which I have devoted myself up to this point with all my courage.... (Penguin Books ed., trans. JM. Cohen, pp. 169-70).

More, much more, could be said on this topic, but I don't know how much interest OLers have in autobiographies and the problems involved in writing them. I will therefore stop for now.

Ghs

Thank you for this response. Many things strike me. Of the ones you cite , I have only read two of them, Augustine and Orwell. Orwell I revere, he seems incapable of writing an untrue sentence. Augustine, I am glad that God made him good after he had had his fun.

Another is the brutal honesty reference. That is really the heart of it. Honesty is brutal, and writers if they choose to write must also choose on whom to inflict the brutality, or rather, how to distribute it- on their loved ones or on themselves, if they essay autobiography.

I'd never dare.

[George H. Smith]

Thank you for this response. Many things strike me. Of the ones you cite , I have only read two of them, Augustine and Orwell. Orwell I revere, he seems incapable of writing an untrue sentence. Augustine, I am glad that God made him good after he had had his fun.

Another is the brutal honesty reference. That is really the heart of it. Honesty is brutal, and writers if they choose to write must also choose on whom to inflict the brutality, or rather, how to distribute it- on their loved ones or on themselves, if they essay autobiography.

I'd never dare.

A superb autobiography that I didn't mention is Straight Life (1979), by the great jazz saxophonist Art Pepper. To be precise, Art didn't actually write this. Rather his wife, Laurie, conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with Art and then transcribed and forged the best parts verbatim into a fascinating story. Much of the book is devoted to Art's drug use, especially his heroin addiction, and the thing I like about the account is that Art never lapses into a soppy "reformed sinner" mode. As I recall, he continued using drugs (of one kind or another) to the end of his life, and he remained unapologetic. Pepper was a true musical genius, and he had the ego to match.

I used some of the text from Straight Life for this video, which is Part One of my "Stories of Jazz." This is an altogether remarkable story, one that almost defies belief.

Not long after I uploaded this, I received a request from Laurie Pepper asking permission to post the following "video response." It covers some of the same ground, except here you will actually hear clips from the interviews that she did with Art.

Ghs

Addendum: The background music in the second video is the fifth track from the same album as the tune I used. Titled "Straight Life," it was one of Pepper's early compositions.

[Brant Gaede]

Interesting piece. I'm still trying to figure you out. I will let you know if I ever succeed.

Ghs

George, thank you. Please keep trying. I gave up trying years ago, and that someone of your abilities would undertake the task is an honour I do not deserve.

Apologies for the sloppy editing. I just noticed the extra m in the topic title and a missing word in the post. The m is one of the letters still missing from my keyboard and it disappears and reappears at will.

I would never actually write a memoir,(except micromini like this one) though as I said on PM recently I think everybody should write one, and I think that's worth saying again on the the board.

I don't say everyone should publish one. But everyone should write their own life story, it's good for us.

The old saw that everyone should write a book, have a child, build a house , and (what's the other one? I'm sure there are four of them), to live a full life, I think like most cliches has a metaphorical truth that is adjustable for the time you live in. You should tell your own story. You should have a connection with the generation after you, through the body or through the spirit or the mind. As to the house, I don't know what you should do, though. Maybe just go camping once in a while.

George, I haven't checked, but my impression is that you are writing a memoir or autobio. judging from some of your reminiscences here that I have come across, it should be jaw-droppingly interesting, to borrow an adjective from one of my favourite publications, the National Enquirer.

In seriousness, I've been thinking about the process of writing the internal story from memory, and how complex it is. "In the beginning I was born" is about the only absolutely true, incontrovertible sentence one can ever write, it seems to me. And it's already been written. If you've had any stray thoughts along this line, please share.

I discussed my plans for an autobiography -- Sex, Drugs, and Philosophy: In Pursuit of a Hedonistic Life -- in the plagiarism thread; and though I wrote some fragments and notes at that time, I realistically don't know if I shall ever complete it. The main problem here is failure of nerve. There would be no point in writing such a book unless it were brutally honest -- unless, that is, it contains both the pros and cons of the type of life I decided to live while in my early twenties -- and dredging up all those memories would mean reliving some very painful events.

Writing an autobiography is a tricky matter. Unless you are so famous that enough people are inherently interested in your life, most people don't really care about what you did. Autobiographies are typically apologies (in the sense of a justification or defense of one's actions), and this has led some historians to claim that autobiographies should not even be classified as "history," given how unreliable and biased they are. I tend to agree with this, to a point, but I would argue that the best autobiographies are largely internal accounts. That is to say, they largely focus on the thoughts and emotions of the writer; and, when well done, they can qualify as good, or even great, literature, if not as accurate history.

An internal autobiography requires a certain type of mind, namely, one that is intensely introspective. Relatively few political or military figures have developed this ability, which is why I usually find the autobiographies they write to be boring. Among the writers who did have this ability, and who were able to translate their memories into writing, I would include Augustine, Rousseau, Thomas De Quincey, J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and George Orwell. (Victorians tended to write excellent autobiographies, probably because many of them were pathologically introspective, which is a trait I identify with.)

Herbert Spencer pinpointed the basic problem in the preface to his massive, two-volume work, An Autobiography. An autobiography, Spencer wrote, is necessarily "egotistic, because it exhibits a person who is "continually talking about himself" -- which means that it will be "inevitably defective as lacking facts of importance, and still more as giving imperfect or untrue interpretations of those facts which it contains." Spencer concludes: "The reader has to discount the impression produced as well as he can."

Another writer who was acutely aware of the problems involved was J.J. Rousseau, in The Confessions. He was brutally honest about himself to a degree that few if any modern writers would dare to be; e.g., he discusses his obsession with being sexually dominated by a woman and his compulsion to expose himself. Rousseau notes that, even as an adult, he was "still a child in many ways." He further observes that "objects generally make less impression on me than does the memory of them," which is why the events of his childhood were more relevant to explaining his character than the events of his later life. Rousseau continues:

I should like in some way to make my soul transparent to the reader's eye, and for that purpose I am trying to present it from all points of view, to show it in all lights, and to contrive that none of its movements shall escape his notice, so that he may judge for himself of the principle which has produced them.

If I made myself responsible for the result and said to him, 'Such is my character,' he might suppose, if not that I am deceiving him, that at least I am deceiving myself. But by relating to him in simple detail all that has happened to me, all that I have done, all that I have felt, I cannot lead him into error, unless willfully; and even if I wish to, I shall not easily succeed by this method. His task it to assemble those elements and to assess the being who is made up of them. The summing-up must be his, and if he comes to wrong conclusions, the fault will be of his own making. But, with this in view, it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well. It is not for me to judge the relative importance of events; I must relate them all, and leave the selection to him. That is the task to which I have devoted myself up to this point with all my courage.... (Penguin Books ed., trans. JM. Cohen, pp. 169-70).

More, much more, could be said on this topic, but I don't know how much interest OLers have in autobiographies and the problems involved in writing them. I will therefore stop for now.

Ghs

Thank you for this response. Many things strike me. Of the ones you cite , I have only read two of them, Augustine and Orwell. Orwell I revere, he seems incapable of writing an untrue sentence. Augustine, I am glad that God made him good after he had had his fun.

Another is the brutal honesty reference. That is really the heart of it. Honesty is brutal, and writers if they choose to write must also choose on whom to inflict the brutality, or rather, how to distribute it- on their loved ones or on themselves, if they essay autobiography.

I'd never dare.

If you want to read great autobiography, read great fiction, as in great novels. I'm going read Straight Life--thanks George--I'll read J.J. Rousseau in hell--or my dying hospital bed.

--Brant

.

[George H. Smith]

If you want to read great autobiography, read great fiction, as in great novels. I'm going read Straight Life--thanks George--I'll read J.J. Rousseau in hell--or my dying hospital bed.

--Brant

.

Which novels did you have in mind? Some novels may be autobiographical, but most are not. The fact that novelists typically draw from their own experiences does not make the books they write autobiographies in any meaningful sense.

Consider We the Living. This novel obviously has some autobiographical aspects to it, but it is not an autobiography of Ayn Rand. Rand's other novels, such as Atlas Shrugged, lack even these autobiographical features, for the most part.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

I'm going read Straight Life--thanks George--I'll read J.J. Rousseau in hell--or my dying hospital bed.

--Brant

.

I reread some of Straight Life last night, after posting my comment. Specifically, I read the three chapters in which Pepper recounts the nearly 4-1/2 years (starting in 1960) that he spent in San Quentin, after being convicted of a narcotics charge for the third time. I believe that Pepper served around 8 years altogether in various prisons.

Pepper was arrested after being seen leaving the house of a known drug dealer, and he had around $250 of heroin on him. The narcs -- those fine upstanding members of the LAPD -- beat him to a pulp in an effort to get him to rat on the dealer, who was also a friend, but Pepper adamantly refused, claiming that he had the junk on him before he entered the house. Then, after throwing Pepper in a crowded jail cell with violent criminals, the cops lied to reporters and said that Pepper had indeed ratted on the dealer. When this story appeared in the newspaper, Pepper was certain he would be beaten to death by other inmates (which was what the cops had in mind). Fortunately for Pepper, the dealer had also been arrested, and he passed the word that Pepper was not a rat. That probably saved his life.

Pepper, aside from being a musical genius, was also a brilliant story teller, and he relates details in a matter-of-fact way that are anything but flattering to himself. As one reviewer wrote in The New Yorker:

Straight Life demonstrates again and again that Pepper has the ear and memory and interpretive lyricism of a first-rate novelist....He did five years in San Quentin and his descriptions of life there are relentless and brilliant....He is an eloquent and gifted man.

Pepper's "interpretive lyricism" is all the more remarkable when we recall that his account was transcribed verbatim (complete with grammatical errors) from interviews conducted by his wife.

Ironically, Pepper was never convicted for his real crimes, such as the many burglaries he committed to pay for his drug habit. He recounts these events in his usual matter-of-fact way, without attempting to justify or apologize for anything. Pepper was so convinced of his own genius that he didn't seem to think that ordinary rules applied to him. He might almost be described as a Nietzschean.

Straight Life is a fascinating book, largely because it is so spontaneous. One needn't be a jazz fan to enjoy it.

Ghs

Addendum: A stroke of genius by Laurie Pepper was to interview many of Pepper's friends and then insert their comments in appropriate places throughout the book. Many comments are very critical of Pepper, but there seems to be a common theme, namely, that people are willing to put up with a lot more from a genius than they would with anyone else. Some people might find similarities here to the friends of Ayn Rand.

[George H. Smith]

Into the kitchen came our landlady, Ada Keene, widow of Elijah Keene. I don't know how long "'Lige" had been dead, but Ada did not seem to miss him much at that point, so I suppose it had been a while. On her considerable shoulders she bore the slaughtered carcass of a deer.

Carol,

Did this actually happen? I know that Canadians can do strange things, having lived with one for 10 years, but lugging the carcass of a deer into a kitchen seems a bit much.

Ghs

[caroljane]

Into the kitchen came our landlady, Ada Keene, widow of Elijah Keene. I don't know how long "'Lige" had been dead, but Ada did not seem to miss him much at that point, so I suppose it had been a while. On her considerable shoulders she bore the slaughtered carcass of a deer.

Carol,

Did this actually happen? I know that Canadians can do strange things, having lived with one for 10 years, but lugging the carcass of a deer into a kitchen seems a bit much.

Ghs

George, it did not. What happened was, she brought in the deer, or most of it, which verifiably she had shot herself, somewhat cut up and wrapped in newspaper. I also remember her dressed in her late husband's plaid hunting shirt, cap and pants, after a hunt. And in various of his other garments.

That I chose (unconsciously at the time) to write the incident this way, is what set me thinking about the self-truth issue.

PS If you lived with a Canadian for 10 years you may be eligible for some form of pension. Us taxpayersare happy to pay.

Edited May 31, 2011 by daunce lynam

[Brant Gaede]

If you want to read great autobiography, read great fiction, as in great novels. I'm going read Straight Life--thanks George--I'll read J.J. Rousseau in hell--or my dying hospital bed.

--Brant

.

Which novels did you have in mind? Some novels may be autobiographical, but most are not. The fact that novelists typically draw from their own experiences does not make the books they write autobiographies in any meaningful sense.

Consider We the Living. This novel obviously has some autobiographical aspects to it, but it is not an autobiography of Ayn Rand. Rand's other novels, such as Atlas Shrugged, lack even these autobiographical features, for the most part.

Ghs

I meant not a standard-type autobio but the novel as an expression of the novelist's psychology and intelligence.

--Brant

[caroljane]

If you want to read great autobiography, read great fiction, as in great novels. I'm going read Straight Life--thanks George--I'll read J.J. Rousseau in hell--or my dying hospital bed.

--Brant

.

Which novels did you have in mind? Some novels may be autobiographical, but most are not. The fact that novelists typically draw from their own experiences does not make the books they write autobiographies in any meaningful sense.

Consider We the Living. This novel obviously has some autobiographical aspects to it, but it is not an autobiography of Ayn Rand. Rand's other novels, such as Atlas Shrugged, lack even these autobiographical features, for the most part.

Ghs

I meant not a standard-type autobio but the novel as an expression of the novelist's psychology and intelligence.

--Brant

We the Living was her best novel. Qua novel, as she would have said.

[Brant Gaede]

We the Living was her best novel. Qua novel, as she would have said.

She wrote two great novels. Neither was WTL. WTL was her best, though, but the one I'm least interested in any re-reading. WTL was Rand's way of divorcing herself from Soviet Russia so she could be an American. She did become an American as much as she could. If she had any children they'd have been more American than she was, which is to say, 100%. I'd say she got 3/4ths there, which was remarkable. She never really understood, for instance, that the right to self defense meant the right to defend yourself with something--that is, she never really understood the right to self defense. I think Canadians have this problem too, and the Austrailians and the Brits and New Jerseyans. One reason I left that State and went back to Arizona.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Speaking of autobiographies, here is an interesting passage from Ian Jack, English Literature 1815-1835 (Oxford, 1963, p. 366):

One of the first memoirs to be called an Autobiography was John Galt's, published in 1833; but the word had already been used in the titles of a number of novels, including Galt's own Member and Radical....

Now, if you really want an answer to the question "Who is John Galt?" you know where to look. According to the Wiki article:

John Galt (2 May 1779 – 11 April 1839) was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commenter. Because he was the first novelist to deal with issues of the industrial revolution, he has been called the first political novelist in the English language

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

A superb autobiography that I didn't mention is Straight Life (1979), by the great jazz saxophonist Art Pepper.

Another autobiography that I strongly recommend, even for people who are not jazz fans, is Miles Davis (with Quincy Troupe), Miles: The Autobiography (1989). This is an invaluable piece of cultural history, especially for those who are interested in the underbelly of life in NYC during the 1950s.

In addition, Miles' harrowing account of his experiences with heroin withdrawal (especially on page 170) is probably the most realistic I have ever read -- and I've read many similar accounts over the years. The conclusion Miles reaches (p. 164) is anything but orthodox:

I have always thought that narcotics should be legalized so that it wouldn't be that much of a street problem. I mean, why should someone like Billie Holiday have to die from trying to kick a habit, from trying to start all over again? I think the drugs should have been made available, maybe through a doctor, so she wouldn't have had to hustle for it. The same thing goes for Bird [i.e., the great alto saxophonist Charlie Parker].

Ghs