[gmw]

Originally Posted by issybird

[...] Still, this doesn't matter much. I don't have to like an author to find his memoir compelling. This one didn't reach that level for me; it was full of interest but it was pedestrian in the telling, to me, and lacked the level of self-awareness I like to find.

I haven't read or followed anything else from James Rebanks, so I am working only from what I read in this book and what I see other people saying of is online presence. He got me offside from the opening sentence of his book, and this made it much harder for me to look kindly on anything more.

For example I've been sitting on the what I post below, not really sure whether I should air this. issybird you speak of instincts at war with each other, and for me the idea of offering what seems such personal criticism feels wrong to me, a literary critique should not be personal, but how can we possibly discuss reactions to a memoir like this without getting personal?

What follows relates to what you were saying about a lack of self-awareness, and I think that is probably at the core of what irks me about this book; the constant stream of contradictions that he doesn't seem to recognise.


Quote from the book:

I wonder whether any of them see the wall my grandfather built, or care that it stands, or wonder who built it.

And while in Oxford, did he ask himself who raised those walls or laid that pavement, or built that desk he was sitting at? As a man steeped in tradition, didn't he sit in awe of the history that surrounded him? (I get that feeling just by watching an episode of Lewis.)

My guess is that it was more likely the Lake District tourist had asked the question, than he had; he seemed to show no interest at all in Oxford or its inhabitants. I get the impression the author has never been a tourist anywhere; to be somewhere (other than home) simply to watch and wonder. Do this and he might better understand those that are invade his home lands.

And this surprised me:

Dad hadn’t wanted to do the picnic anyway, they had a minor row, and we retreated back to the farm. Fell walkers we weren’t.

Why not? As I grew up we had multiple places on the farm worth holding picnics on: family time, and the farm was part of the family. Or I could lose whole afternoons wandering our property alone, watching for finches, hoping to see robins and so on (okay, and I admit it, sometimes with the destructive intention of shooting rabbits). As I read this book I imagined having the fells to explore and simply could not understand his lack of interest.

It seemed yet another self-contradiction in the book. He professes a love of the landscape, supposedly inherited from his grandfather and father, and yet never explored the fells for their own sake? No wonder they cannot understand the intruders (tourists).

So when we get statements like:

sometimes think we are so independently minded because we have seen just enough of the wider world to know we like our own old ways and independence best

I see not independence but blind ignorance, plain and simple. I'm not arguing that ultra-modern living is better, but I am arguing that other livelihoods have value to anyone that will take the time to understand them. It seems a very conservative mindset: anything unknown is pointless and worthless. (At best; sometimes they believe it is inherently bad and should be abolished.) I got quite sick of seeing this view scattered through the book. I had expected to be told about the joys of his life, not listen to him dismiss mine as unworthy. It quite disrupted my enjoyment of the parts of the book that spoke of things I did want to know about.