I wonder what makes someone write their autobiography? Money, obviously is a frequent motivation but you presumably must also feel that you have something of interest to share with others. Famous people are the ones that publishers and literary agents focus upon but actually I think ‘ordinary’ lives might be just as consuming to read. I always want to know the backstory, i.e. how did someone get where they are now? What choices and decisions did they make? What good- or bad- fortune came upon them? And then there is the part history and posterity might play.
One of my daughters has recently exhorted me to ‘write it all down.’ She means the story of our family. She feels there are things she doesn’t know or can’t remember and wants there to be a record for her own daughter to read in years to come. I’m doing it and it makes me realise how tricky the truth is. It is so easy to put a particular spin onto a series of events. Whether I will have given a real and accurate picture in the end remains to be seen.
I have recently read two autobiographies and enjoyed them both. The first is Becoming by Michelle Obama. It is well written and made me want to turn the page but even at the end I couldn’t quite decide if she was writing with a particular agenda, her own spin. Maybe I am being naive, maybe we all do that and it is inevitable. Her own educational journey was impressive, supported by parents who clearly saw education as the way to climb out of poor black neighbourhoods with limited work opportunities. Having qualified as a lawyer by way of Harvard, Michelle Obama found she really didn’t enjoy practising law and moved in various directions, working in programs that promoted social cohesion and racial equality. She gives the impression that she didn’t overly enjoy her eight years in the White House and certainly never felt comfortable in the political circus ring. The book does give interesting insights into the character of Barack Obama and the work ethic of them both is rather jaw dropping. This autobiography is a intelligently written and I also enjoyed learning more about the American political system.
The second book is about the amazingly accomplished musical family, the Kanneh Masons. This is written by the mother Kadiatu, whose son Sheku played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The family have a rich heritage including Antigua, Wales and Sierra Leone and now live in Nottingham. The discipline and focus involved in getting child after child into the Royal Academy of Music on scholarships is amazing. I hope the younger ones achieve the same distinction or it may feel like failure. There are 7 Kanneh Mason children, 5 girls and 2 boys and all of them play the piano and a string instrument. From a recent TV film on them, they present as a happy, purposeful family unit. Rather perversely, I found myself wanting some evidence of a small amount of rebellion. Were we not shown that or does it truthfully not exist? Whilst I was in awe of the rigid timetables and rotas that are put into place to ensure practice time, morning and evening, I felt slightly uncomfortable at the lack of social time available to the children. Having friends round to play or going to tea at someone’s house seemed to be considered rather a waste of time.
One thing this account had in common with the Obama story was the continual getting up ridiculously early in the morning to do household chores or to go to the gym. As far as I’m concerned, the hours before six a.m are very definitely night and I wish to be asleep. This might help explain why I am neither rich nor famous. I suppose the other commonality is an incredible amount of determination and grit and maybe this is born out of adversity and a huge need to prove oneself as persons of black heritage in a white political and musical world.
Another autobiography that I would recommend is Slipstream by Elizabeth Jane Howard.
You may have read her Cazalet Chronicles, really I suppose regarded as modern classics now, taking a family through the last years of the 19th century and into the middle of the 20th.
It wasn’t until I read her memoir Slipstream that I realised how much of her own life had been subsumed into the story of the Cazalets.
Elizabeth Jane Howard was at one time married to Kingsley Amis, tempestuously inevitably. Years ago I lived in a London maisonette from which they had just moved. All the walls were covered in watered silk. Memorable. Anyway, here is a riveting life full of names: Laurie Lee, Peter Scott, Cecil Day-Lewis, Olivia Manning. I could go on! The author begins the preface rather endearingly:
‘I feel as though I have lived my life in the slipstream of experience; and that often I have had to repeat the same disastrous situation several times before I got the message.’
I appreciate the honesty and candour of Howard’s writing and I love the brightly coloured picture she paints of literary life in London in the latter half of the twentieth century. My goodness, she really did know everyone!
The last two that I have pulled from my bookshelf are ‘The Centre of the bed’ recounting the life of Joan Bakewell and ‘Climbing the mango trees’ by Madhur Jaffrey. Both books have a strong sense of place which adds much to the identities and cultural experiences of both writers. Joan Bakewell takes us from a Northern working class family through Cambridge to the BBC whilst Madhur Jaffrey envelopes us in a privileged, comfortable Anglo Indian childhood where you can almost smell the the tamarind chutney.
Joan Bakewell’s life also reflects the later decades of the last century where the role of women totally changed. Thus she was the first of her family to have a university education (Cambridge), she became a regular face on the BBC at the time of the Cuban crisis and has in more recent years been an influential thinker and adviser within political circles. However, probably one of the most dramatic events of which she writes is that of having her affair with the playwright Harold Pinter adapted by him into the play ‘Betrayal’. This almost seems more like fiction than fact.
Madhur Jaffrey on the other hand writes of a society that feels distant and historical now and one with utterly different ideas about the place of women in the world. Reading this book I often smiled at the mixture of English nursery rhymes and Shakespeare plays with a Catholic convent and Hindu festivals. Quite disarming and always, always surrounded by food. A great read.
Tom Stoppard, I have recently read, condemns any form of biography as “the mesh through which our real life escapes.” Of course none of us ever reveals our whole self to others, whether the book is biography or auto biography. Therein lies the enigma.