Allured by red berets and flamboyant blue-and maroon shoulder flashes
You spend a couple of days engrossed in a book, as I did with Richard Adam's autobiography The day Gone By. Then you sit back and ask yourself, "Well what did I learn from that?"
Adam's is the least -known famous writer in the world. He wrote a book about rabbits called Watership Down ,and another about dogs infected with the plague. I've never read them because i was afraid he might have the animals talking. But I was intrigued enough to read this memoir.
At least it was honest, born in 1920, he writes at length about a childhood filled with the love of little creatures. However it seems to be an intellectual sort of interest rather than real love. He knows the habits and latin names for birds when he is only seven but at the same time he smashes butterflies' heads for his "collection".
He writes with wonder at his intellectualism at Oxford. He goes on at length about how successful an army captain he is. And then there are his affairs, innocent and not so innocent, with a boy, at a time when such liaisons were more fraught than they are now. He is the centre of his world as I suppose we all are really, only we generally grow out of the wonder of it in adulthood.
But as with all writing the more we seek to hide (or obfuscate) the more we trend to reveal. Some one takes and doesn't return some of his books.( It's wartime, for God's sake!) So in revenge he names and shames him. Yet in the very next paragraph he he himself steals, with out censure, a copy of Emma from the unit's poor, meagre, wartime library.
He has a jolly time in the army. It is all merely a matter of learning how to deal with these working-class types. ( He himself is the son of an impoverished alcoholic doctor.) He earns his stripes by educating them. For I'm a jolly good fellow. Through his own eyes he's an excellent sort of chap.
he volunteers for service in an elite corps. "What had allured me in the first place... had been the red berets and the flamboyant blue and maroon shoulder flash - Bellerophon riding on Pegasus to kill the Chimaera..." Funny reason, funny bloke. The confession doesn't endear the reader to him.
Any way, instead of relying on Adam's own rather biased judgement of himself, it's nice to hear what some one else has to say. For reasons best known to himself, he offers up one Brigadier Poett's opinion of him. "I learned from my friend Denis Rendell that one day had recollected me... as "that quite awful ass'.
Oddly, it's the opinion I gained from reading this autobiography He describes himself being' about five foot eight'. I translated this as being more like five foot six, nothing to be ashamed of but still a bit short of heroic. Other of his self decriptions, of having, for instance, to fend off women with both hands; of coming 17th in a marathon; of winning academic prizes; of excelling in giving people what they want etcetera, etcetera.
In short , the memoir makes fascinating reading for all the wrong reasons. He writes beautifully, although annoyingly, he lapses into Greek and Latin with out translations, but you read him with the morbid fascination of a child watching Punch and Judy.
Written in old age, the memoir is a mirror into which you sense he gazes with a great deal of affection (if not also affectation).
One thing's for sure, it doesn't make me lust after reading his Rabbit book, But still paradoxically, well worth reading. One senses that, it's almost a work of fiction itself. 4/5
Adam's is the least -known famous writer in the world. He wrote a book about rabbits called Watership Down ,and another about dogs infected with the plague. I've never read them because i was afraid he might have the animals talking. But I was intrigued enough to read this memoir.
At least it was honest, born in 1920, he writes at length about a childhood filled with the love of little creatures. However it seems to be an intellectual sort of interest rather than real love. He knows the habits and latin names for birds when he is only seven but at the same time he smashes butterflies' heads for his "collection".
He writes with wonder at his intellectualism at Oxford. He goes on at length about how successful an army captain he is. And then there are his affairs, innocent and not so innocent, with a boy, at a time when such liaisons were more fraught than they are now. He is the centre of his world as I suppose we all are really, only we generally grow out of the wonder of it in adulthood.
But as with all writing the more we seek to hide (or obfuscate) the more we trend to reveal. Some one takes and doesn't return some of his books.( It's wartime, for God's sake!) So in revenge he names and shames him. Yet in the very next paragraph he he himself steals, with out censure, a copy of Emma from the unit's poor, meagre, wartime library.
He has a jolly time in the army. It is all merely a matter of learning how to deal with these working-class types. ( He himself is the son of an impoverished alcoholic doctor.) He earns his stripes by educating them. For I'm a jolly good fellow. Through his own eyes he's an excellent sort of chap.
he volunteers for service in an elite corps. "What had allured me in the first place... had been the red berets and the flamboyant blue and maroon shoulder flash - Bellerophon riding on Pegasus to kill the Chimaera..." Funny reason, funny bloke. The confession doesn't endear the reader to him.
Any way, instead of relying on Adam's own rather biased judgement of himself, it's nice to hear what some one else has to say. For reasons best known to himself, he offers up one Brigadier Poett's opinion of him. "I learned from my friend Denis Rendell that one day had recollected me... as "that quite awful ass'.
Oddly, it's the opinion I gained from reading this autobiography He describes himself being' about five foot eight'. I translated this as being more like five foot six, nothing to be ashamed of but still a bit short of heroic. Other of his self decriptions, of having, for instance, to fend off women with both hands; of coming 17th in a marathon; of winning academic prizes; of excelling in giving people what they want etcetera, etcetera.
In short , the memoir makes fascinating reading for all the wrong reasons. He writes beautifully, although annoyingly, he lapses into Greek and Latin with out translations, but you read him with the morbid fascination of a child watching Punch and Judy.
Written in old age, the memoir is a mirror into which you sense he gazes with a great deal of affection (if not also affectation).
One thing's for sure, it doesn't make me lust after reading his Rabbit book, But still paradoxically, well worth reading. One senses that, it's almost a work of fiction itself. 4/5
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