I’m dipping into Kingsley Amis’ memoirs these days (thank you, JOB). Remarkable stuff. Cutting bit from his section on Robert Graves:
“I found it easy enough to ask him questions about those quasi-mystical ideas of his like the old White Goddess. How much did he believe in her?
‘About as much as the classical poets believed in the Muses or a Christian in the Resurrection [remember this was thirty years ago]. Anyway, it works for me. It’s useful.'”
Don’t know what Amis was getting at with the bit about thirty years ago. But ouch.
Matthew, Just in case you haven't seen it, the Atlantic Monthly I gave you a while back (with the Flanagan article) has the complete article, but in the mean time:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200705/kingsley-amis
Why thank you, sir. That was a rich issue, but I missed that particular article. Amis does give the impression that he is very much mastering the material he doles out in the memoirs, but I'm not sure he's to be blamed for that. Glad to see there's a good bio out there. I try not to be an Anglophile, but these guys make it tricky.
Matthew, I am not a wise man, so I sure wish you would explain what this means:
"Amis does give the impression that he is very much mastering the material he doles out in the memoirs, but I'm not sure he's to be blamed for that." MJH
What an exquisite way of saying, "Write clearly, you dumb ox." All I meant was that, in reading Amis' memoirs (so far), I get the sense that he is keeping very tight control over the self that he presents. Not to say that he is above releasing grubby details, just that he is careful about which grubby details he releases. For a modern soul like mine, so used to "let it all hang out" memoirs that seem to derive their virtue from just how much grotty detail they are willing to share, this is unusual. But not, upon consideration, blameworthy. The job of the memoir is not necessarily to lay bare every wart and pock, even if it's what I've come to expect.
Is that clearer?
Yes, and since you have some semblance of the life of the mind left, I am not implying any 'ox' thing. You see I was reading about history and politics when you were reading memoirs and now I read books with titles like "The meaning of evolution: morphological construction and ideological reconstruction of Darwin's theory". Such books don't leave me with any deep observations about human life. So I come to this blog to polish my witty dinner conversation and see what normal people talk about – except the anal bleaching stuff, of course. MJH
Haven't been to the blog in a few weeks…
It's rocking, by the way.
You see I was reading about history and politics when you were reading memoirs and now I read books with titles like "The meaning of evolution: morphological construction and ideological reconstruction of Darwin's theory". Such books don't leave me with any deep observations about human life.
The idea of coming out with startling and fascinating dinner-table insights based on evolutionary theory does seem tantalizing though, doesn't it? Or is that just me being odd?