More specifically concerning: memoir
movements
16 July 2006, around 21.44.
After about two hours of reading or discussion, we would go for a walk and then have tea at Lyons, or in the restaurant above the Regal cinema. Sometimes he came to my house in Searle street for supper. Once after supper, Wittgenstein, my wife and I went for a walk on Midsummer Common. We […]
tetrad
31 August 2008, around 0.12.
We always associate the word ‘book’ with printing, and think of it in terms of format and typographical convenience, but such mechanical criteria do not apply to notebooks, whose beginning and end are determined only by the unity of the poetic impulse which gives birth to a given series of poems. In other words, a […]
astrolabe
17 September 2008, around 2.23.
Upon a Sunday morning, then, my father was walking round the lake which he had caused to be created, regretting that he had not moved the old river bed further back, and thinking out possible fantasies in stone, torrents to fall through the hanging woods above, pavilions upon islands and decorative effects generally (a few […]
substantiation
22 November 2012, around 19.22.
I was almost exactly halfway through Céleste Albaret’s recollections of Monsieur Proust when I realized I had erred in the matter of genre. I had supposed it was merely a servant’s memoir of her eccentric employer. Given the pains she takes to clarify her stances on her employer (not crazy, not malingering, not a bit […]
on biography (3)
8 February 2013, around 0.02.
After reading Didier Eribon’s biography of Foucault, I turned with some relief to Karl Popper’s memoir Unended Quest. The biography of Foucault was maddening because it did what good biographies should do, and didn’t speculate, especially where speculation was warranted. Popper, meanwhile, positively disinvites speculation. There’s nothing to speculate about; he grinds through ideas with […]
the art of ‘truthiness’
21 October 2015, around 19.12.
Well, if I forked over the cover price for nonfiction, I consider it my business. While it’s great she [Vivian Gornick] owned up to her deceits, it’s hard to lend credence to any after-the-fact confession, especially one as vague or self-justifying as this one. It’s as if after lunch the deli guy quipped, ‘I put […]
marginal
6 March 2017, around 5.19.
Notes on reading Judith Butler as a tonic to Rousseau.
regardez
31 August 2019, around 10.02.
What was most interesting was the sense and use of time – the few hours, days, weeks passing from the spur to the flight – and the haphazard visions of memory run headlong. It (sc. This Tilting World) echoed, in propinquity,1 the promise of the narrators of The Glass Eye or Heartberries to create a […]
testimonia
8 December 2019, around 16.05.
Vladislav Khodasevich and Nina Berberova, Sorrento, 1925. We perceived everything that happened then as an omen. But of what? —Vladislav Khodasevich (‘Muni’ in Necropolis, p. 83) It is difficult to know how to start thinking about Necropolis. Before I finished the book, I was certainly inclined to be dismissive – just so much gossip about […]
biophagous
9 February 2024, around 17.26.
Erysichthon, engaging in some ill-judged arboriculture, cropped from Johann Wilhelm Baur’s illustrations to Ovid (ca. 1641) …soon memory pours forth from every direction, sprouting its vines and flowers up around you till the old garden’s taken shape in all its fragrant glory. Almost unbelievable how much can rush forward to fill an absolute blankness. —Mary […]
tracings
11 February 2024, around 13.33.
In the course of his travels, he generally acquires some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application, […]
Citation (77)
18 February 2024, around 16.42.
why write?
de monstra demonstranda
22 February 2024, around 11.26.
Medea, bad mommy extraordinaire, engaging in a bit of light witchcraft, illustration by Johann Wilhelm Baur to Ovid (ca. 1640s) The school of Criticism has made known in print its superiority to human feelings and the world, above which it sits enthroned in sublime solitude, with nothing but an occasional roar of sarcastic laughter from […]
aide-memoire
27 February 2024, around 11.50.
It is cold again today, and going out for my run felt burdensome, although I managed it, mostly by distracting myself by trying to sort out different genres of memoir. Some people say there are seven, others say there are thirteen, but none of their lists fully encompass the sub-generic specificities that I have drawn […]