I was touched and inspired and suitably in awe reading about the amazing Natalie De Voe.
I have read tributes to myself that I thought were filled with triteness or which valued things that I didn't much value myself. Maybe the ideal obituary would be edited by the soon-to-be-departed, not so that it could be bowdlerized, but because I think a person knows what her life was or was not about. Tributes and even critical accounts, of course, say as much about the people who write them as the people they are written about. The shallowness can be on the part of the author, not the subject. There is a reason why a Philip Roth was so stingy in granting access to his papers for a biography, although his ultimate choice backfired horribly.
I used to be consumed with the idea of writing a complete and definitive autobiography and then realized it would be impossible, and themes were the way to go instead. That first conception of an accounting of a life is hard to let go of, though, I think because we have a strong desire in life and literature to really know people, and that does seem to require that there can't be these holes, that everything must be taken stock of. It's destructive of the idea of knowing somebody to be asked a basic question and not to be able to answer it. "Knowing" is multifaceted, though. There are as many facets as school subjects. It's o.k. to get As in some areas, Fs in others. Better that, I say, than universal Bs. The holes don't mean you didn't know someone, and I always trust my instinct and experience over external facts.
Leaving parts out of one's life as a practicality in response to volume is one thing, but not wanting to talk about some things is another. I can't completely separate my desire to leave an adequate account of my life from my desire to confess some things, I have to say. I guess life is in a sense a squaring of accounts, and if you don't lay out all of the bad stuff, it's hard to be at peace.
I was touched and inspired and suitably in awe reading about the amazing Natalie De Voe.
I have read tributes to myself that I thought were filled with triteness or which valued things that I didn't much value myself. Maybe the ideal obituary would be edited by the soon-to-be-departed, not so that it could be bowdlerized, but because I think a person knows what her life was or was not about. Tributes and even critical accounts, of course, say as much about the people who write them as the people they are written about. The shallowness can be on the part of the author, not the subject. There is a reason why a Philip Roth was so stingy in granting access to his papers for a biography, although his ultimate choice backfired horribly.
I used to be consumed with the idea of writing a complete and definitive autobiography and then realized it would be impossible, and themes were the way to go instead. That first conception of an accounting of a life is hard to let go of, though, I think because we have a strong desire in life and literature to really know people, and that does seem to require that there can't be these holes, that everything must be taken stock of. It's destructive of the idea of knowing somebody to be asked a basic question and not to be able to answer it. "Knowing" is multifaceted, though. There are as many facets as school subjects. It's o.k. to get As in some areas, Fs in others. Better that, I say, than universal Bs. The holes don't mean you didn't know someone, and I always trust my instinct and experience over external facts.
Leaving parts out of one's life as a practicality in response to volume is one thing, but not wanting to talk about some things is another. I can't completely separate my desire to leave an adequate account of my life from my desire to confess some things, I have to say. I guess life is in a sense a squaring of accounts, and if you don't lay out all of the bad stuff, it's hard to be at peace.
Your mother-in-law sounds like an extraordinary person. Thinking of your whole family -