Arts &
Culture: The Trouble With Autobiography by Paul Theroux bringing a caption
underneath his photograph informing that "Autobiographies invariably distory,
insists author Paul Theroux, at his home in
Hawaii"
JM:A
very enjoyable reading, brought to the list with a Nab-sighting,
sent by Jim Twiggs. Right beneath the photograph of Theroux there's
a typo ("distory") that creates an interesting compression
(distory/distopia/distorted history?)...
Although Theroux
mentions many European writers, and not only Americans, he makes no
reference to an author whose copious memoirs are noteworthy in connection
to memoirs in general, and to Nabokov in particular,
considering Van's fictional autobiography in "Ada, or Ardor"
with his various referals to the French Romantics and
to René Chateaubriand.*
I dare to imagine
that Nabokov would have enjoyed the experience of reading
aloud the various chapters of "Speak,Memory" to a a
sophisticated audience, as was the case of Chateaubriand's and MMe Recamier's
salon.
...............................................................................
* - A summary from wikipedia: Mémoires
d'Outre-Tombe - literally "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave" - is an autobiography
in 42 volumes by François-René de Chateaubriand, published posthumously in
1848. Although the work shares characteristics with earlier French
"memoirs" (like the Memoirs of Saint-Simon), the Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe are also
inspired by the Confessions of Rousseau; in addition to providing a record of
political and historical events, Chateaubriand includes details of his private
life and his personal aspirations. The work abounds in instances of the poetic
prose at which Chateaubriand excelled. On the other hand, the melancholy of the
autobiography helped establish Chateaubriand as the idol of the young French
Romantics;...After fragmented public readings of his work in salons, in 1836
Chateaubriand yielded the rights to his work to a society that published it
until his death, paying him accordingly. Having obtained this economic
stability, he completed the work with a fourth set of volumes. In 1841 he wrote
an ample conclusion. Chateaubriand had originally intended to have the work
published at least fifty years after his death, but his financial troubles
forced him, in his words, "to mortgage his tomb."