Always unreliable : the memoirs

498 Pages·2012·2.29 MB·English

by  James

To
Rhoisin and Bruce Beresford
and the getting of wisdom
To
Chester and John Cummings
in memoriam
Mark Boxer and Tom Weiskel
and to
Gabriella Rosselli del Turco
where she lies sleeping
Andromache led the lamentation of the women, while she held in her hands the
head of Hector, her great warrior:
‘Husband, you are gone so young from life, and leave me in your home a
widow. Our child is still but a little fellow, child of ill-fated parents, you and me.
How can he grow up to manhood? Before that, this city shall be overthrown. For
you are gone, you who kept watch over it, and kept safe its wives and their little
ones . . .
‘And you have left woe unutterable and mourning to your parents, Hector; but
in my heart above all others bitter anguish shall abide. Your hands were not
stretched out to me as you lay dying. You spoke to me no living word that I
might have pondered as my tears fell night and day.’
Iliad, xxiv, translated by S. E. Winbolt,
from The Iliad Pocket Book, Constable 1911
I had already noticed with various people that the affectation of praiseworthy
sentiments is not the only way of covering up reprehensible ones, but that a more
up-to-date method is to put these latter on exhibition, so that one has the air of at
least being forthright.
Proust, Le Temps retrouve All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in
order to show how much he can spare.
Johnson
I realise very well that the reader has no great need to know all this; but I need to
tell him.
Rousseau, Les Confessions
I wear a suit of armour made of nothing but my mistakes.
Pierre Reverdy, quoted by Ernst Jünger in Das zweite Pariser Tagebuch, 21
February 1943
I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m basically on my way to Australia.
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