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Not Entitled: A Memoir by Frank Kermode
Frank Kermode has been known for decades as one of the great critics of English literature. Now his subtly nuanced attention turns to a different kind of the experiences of his own life.Throughout his luminous, witty memoir, Kermode touches on deeper, lighter, ineffable issues of autobiography, and he does so with his characteristic grace and precision. In Not Entitled, the miraculous connections between life and literature, between the world and the word, are transformed and ennobled.
Hardcover
First published November 1, 1995
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About the author
Frank Kermode
185 books91 followersSir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2003).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 30, 2018
Recalling Nabokov's " Speak Memory" & "The Facts" by Philip Roth, Frank Kermode has his own take on a personal memoir. It's all here -- his obscure early years on the Isle of Man, his chaotic war-time service in the royal navy, his academic career from the University of Liverpool to Cambridge, his insights on literary theory & post-structuralism, his love of poetry & literature. As the review copy notes: From a great critic of english literature, a different kind of text: a luminous account of his own life. Throughout this personal work, Frank Kermode touches on the deeper, lighter, ineffable issues of autobiography and he does so with his characteristic grace, precision, & amused wisdom. Tracing his life from his childhood through his six years in the Royal Navy during World War II, from his student days in Liverpool to his battles at Cambridge over the literature curriculum & faculty, he shows us the miraculous connections between life and literature, between the world & the word; more, he transforms and ennobles both.
December 27, 2017
Dear Professor Kermode
You won’t have remembered me, but I was a callow undergraduate at King’s when you were King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, and, happily, attached to my college. In a way I regret the adjective ‘callow’ but it was really an inevitable companion to the noun. And, come to think of it, you might remember me as a C.U. who nonetheless had the nerve naively to approach you to partake in a poetry reading I organised sometime in 1977 or 1978. You drew as I recall the Spenser card: I can hear your diffident-sounding, relaxed, voice declaiming:
“It was to weet the good Sir Satyrane” -
Prof J.A.W. Bennett, really an Oxford man, read the closing stanzas of Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, and my then girlfriend and I held hands and suffered an authentic frisson:
”O younge fresshe folkes, he or she
In which that love up-groweth with your age” ....
I still can’t believe I achieved this coup. Professors were unapproachable, formidable. In fact I felt intimidated by most academics I encountered - you, Lisa Jardine, J.A.W.Bennett, Muriel Bradbrook, even John Barrell. Only Helena Shire, and of course Colin MacCabe, furiously demolishing donnish conventions in his signature donkey jacket, and with whose fate you were later to become involved, felt approachable, even though none of you wore your formidable learning on your sleeves. Compounding this belief was the fact that, as you recall, “I was forbidden to give tutorials, the most important form of teaching”. You probably saw Postgrads and Researchers, but not wet-eared Undergrads, and in any case we assumed you would be too busy researching your next book. Under instruction - from whom I can’t recall, I don’t think it was a printed ‘reading list’ - we had dutifully trooped off to Heffers at 20 Trinity Street and purchased, int.al., your Renaissance Essays and Modern Essays. I’d never heard of you before my matriculation, but a brief perusal of these volumes was enough to convince me and others that you had, in a phrase not then current, A Brain The Size Of A Planet - had not only read everything, but also everything anyone else had written about everything, and had insightful things to say in a memorable way. Once, I recall, some of us huddled into your rooms in King’s for a species of soirée, the principal fascination to us hormonal undergrads being your then partner, and soon-to-be wife, the glamorous Anita. At that time I was unaware that a mild-mannered silvery-haired academic could pull a striking younger blonde American bird. So I guess I did learn something that evening. And, be it added, I learned precisely nothing more on the matter from Not Entitled, which sedulously avoids all discussion of your marriages.
But, I remind myself, this is supposed to be a review of your memoir. It was certainly an eye-opener to discover that you came of working-class origin on the Isle of Man, and had served a torrid young manhood in the Royal Navy. When you're young, all adults seem to have been that way forever, and if asked I'd have assumed you to have been a nice middle-class lad from the Home Counties, clever at school and in due course an Oxbridge First in English Literature. How wrong one can be. Reading on, I was somewhat saddened by your constant self-deprecation and, more, by your mostly unpleasant experience of Cambridge. It should be a truism to note that a pupil's or student's experience of a school or university is likely to be far removed from a teacher’s or tutor’s, but I still somehow want you to have enjoyed Cambridge as much as I did. My three years reading English at King’s from 1975 to 1978 were among the best years of my life. Now the wheel has come full circle, and I find myself at 61 working at a provincial university in a job I don’t enjoy, beset by political and personal wrangles, but where I’m sure many students are having a great time and forging lastingly good memories.
So farewell then, Professor Kermode. It is now more than seven years since you passed away, at the age of 91. Your presence in my life was far less fleeting and tangential than mine in yours, but I salute you from afar for your integrity, your fabulous scholarship and the memories of a glimpsed you, bustling along with an armful of papers or even more characteristically, in whites fresh from the squash or tennis court, in the dear dim and dead days of the late 1970s.
You won’t have remembered me, but I was a callow undergraduate at King’s when you were King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, and, happily, attached to my college. In a way I regret the adjective ‘callow’ but it was really an inevitable companion to the noun. And, come to think of it, you might remember me as a C.U. who nonetheless had the nerve naively to approach you to partake in a poetry reading I organised sometime in 1977 or 1978. You drew as I recall the Spenser card: I can hear your diffident-sounding, relaxed, voice declaiming:
“It was to weet the good Sir Satyrane” -
Prof J.A.W. Bennett, really an Oxford man, read the closing stanzas of Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, and my then girlfriend and I held hands and suffered an authentic frisson:
”O younge fresshe folkes, he or she
In which that love up-groweth with your age” ....
I still can’t believe I achieved this coup. Professors were unapproachable, formidable. In fact I felt intimidated by most academics I encountered - you, Lisa Jardine, J.A.W.Bennett, Muriel Bradbrook, even John Barrell. Only Helena Shire, and of course Colin MacCabe, furiously demolishing donnish conventions in his signature donkey jacket, and with whose fate you were later to become involved, felt approachable, even though none of you wore your formidable learning on your sleeves. Compounding this belief was the fact that, as you recall, “I was forbidden to give tutorials, the most important form of teaching”. You probably saw Postgrads and Researchers, but not wet-eared Undergrads, and in any case we assumed you would be too busy researching your next book. Under instruction - from whom I can’t recall, I don’t think it was a printed ‘reading list’ - we had dutifully trooped off to Heffers at 20 Trinity Street and purchased, int.al., your Renaissance Essays and Modern Essays. I’d never heard of you before my matriculation, but a brief perusal of these volumes was enough to convince me and others that you had, in a phrase not then current, A Brain The Size Of A Planet - had not only read everything, but also everything anyone else had written about everything, and had insightful things to say in a memorable way. Once, I recall, some of us huddled into your rooms in King’s for a species of soirée, the principal fascination to us hormonal undergrads being your then partner, and soon-to-be wife, the glamorous Anita. At that time I was unaware that a mild-mannered silvery-haired academic could pull a striking younger blonde American bird. So I guess I did learn something that evening. And, be it added, I learned precisely nothing more on the matter from Not Entitled, which sedulously avoids all discussion of your marriages.
But, I remind myself, this is supposed to be a review of your memoir. It was certainly an eye-opener to discover that you came of working-class origin on the Isle of Man, and had served a torrid young manhood in the Royal Navy. When you're young, all adults seem to have been that way forever, and if asked I'd have assumed you to have been a nice middle-class lad from the Home Counties, clever at school and in due course an Oxbridge First in English Literature. How wrong one can be. Reading on, I was somewhat saddened by your constant self-deprecation and, more, by your mostly unpleasant experience of Cambridge. It should be a truism to note that a pupil's or student's experience of a school or university is likely to be far removed from a teacher’s or tutor’s, but I still somehow want you to have enjoyed Cambridge as much as I did. My three years reading English at King’s from 1975 to 1978 were among the best years of my life. Now the wheel has come full circle, and I find myself at 61 working at a provincial university in a job I don’t enjoy, beset by political and personal wrangles, but where I’m sure many students are having a great time and forging lastingly good memories.
So farewell then, Professor Kermode. It is now more than seven years since you passed away, at the age of 91. Your presence in my life was far less fleeting and tangential than mine in yours, but I salute you from afar for your integrity, your fabulous scholarship and the memories of a glimpsed you, bustling along with an armful of papers or even more characteristically, in whites fresh from the squash or tennis court, in the dear dim and dead days of the late 1970s.
March 14, 2008
Kermode has a wry manner of representing his boyhood on the Isle of Man and a life that held many twists and surprises.
February 6, 2025
The outsider
I dimly remember Frank Kermode as the editor of the handy Fontana Modern Masters series in the seventies, and came across him more recently as the subject of an essay by Clive James in his Meaning of Recognition collection. When Kermode died last year at the age of ninety, his obituaries described him as "the leading literary critic of his generation" and outlined his glittering career, which included spells as (deep breath) the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge - an academic appointment so exalted that it's made by the Crown - and the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. They also described this little autobiography (first published in 1995) as a fine example of his elegant and lucid prose style.
Well, it's certainly well-written, but the man it describes seems - surprisingly - to be a long way from the one who's apparently enjoyed so much success in his chosen field. His theme here echoes his title: a awkward sense of being outside, of an insecurity that's bred from a feeling of inadequacy. He spells this out explicitly in an aside to the reader on p242: "Wherever you go you find the world divided into clubs. [...] You know you can never be a member, though the privileges are sometimes offered on a temporary basis". Perhaps such a bleak world view had its roots in his childhood in a poor family on the Isle of Man, or in his wartime experiences on a frigate, labouring alongside a selection of crew members and officers whose characters and actions ranged from eccentric to lunatic.
Both these periods in his life are described in unflinching detail, but - whilst he drily records some hilarious episodes in the Navy - I found I was more comfortable with his third (and final) chapter, where he discusses his academic career. Some specific incidents are presented at length - notably his resignation from his position as co-editor of the Encounter literary magazine when he realized it was being funded by the CIA, and his role in the Cambridge structuralism debate, which was written up (inaccurately, he says) in the popular press at the time. In keeping with his theme he writes very modestly about his work and activities, taking care always to point out his own shortcomings, which provides a thought-provoking alternative view of a life so distinguished as regards the glories of the world.
Originally reviewed 2 June 2011
I dimly remember Frank Kermode as the editor of the handy Fontana Modern Masters series in the seventies, and came across him more recently as the subject of an essay by Clive James in his Meaning of Recognition collection. When Kermode died last year at the age of ninety, his obituaries described him as "the leading literary critic of his generation" and outlined his glittering career, which included spells as (deep breath) the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge - an academic appointment so exalted that it's made by the Crown - and the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. They also described this little autobiography (first published in 1995) as a fine example of his elegant and lucid prose style.
Well, it's certainly well-written, but the man it describes seems - surprisingly - to be a long way from the one who's apparently enjoyed so much success in his chosen field. His theme here echoes his title: a awkward sense of being outside, of an insecurity that's bred from a feeling of inadequacy. He spells this out explicitly in an aside to the reader on p242: "Wherever you go you find the world divided into clubs. [...] You know you can never be a member, though the privileges are sometimes offered on a temporary basis". Perhaps such a bleak world view had its roots in his childhood in a poor family on the Isle of Man, or in his wartime experiences on a frigate, labouring alongside a selection of crew members and officers whose characters and actions ranged from eccentric to lunatic.
Both these periods in his life are described in unflinching detail, but - whilst he drily records some hilarious episodes in the Navy - I found I was more comfortable with his third (and final) chapter, where he discusses his academic career. Some specific incidents are presented at length - notably his resignation from his position as co-editor of the Encounter literary magazine when he realized it was being funded by the CIA, and his role in the Cambridge structuralism debate, which was written up (inaccurately, he says) in the popular press at the time. In keeping with his theme he writes very modestly about his work and activities, taking care always to point out his own shortcomings, which provides a thought-provoking alternative view of a life so distinguished as regards the glories of the world.
Originally reviewed 2 June 2011
December 1, 2023
The first half of this was very enjoyable. His early life growing up on the Isle of Man was quite unusual and when he came to leave he seems to have had no hankering to go back. When World War 2 broke out he found himself in the navy and there is a very long and entertaining section on his experiences under a a series of crazy captains in various parts of the world.
Unfortunately when he joins the world of academia it becomes all rather tedious even, I would imagine, for the literati. He suffers badly from impostor syndrome, fails miserably at interviews and seems to succeed despite himself.
His is also not the first male memoir I have read which omits almost all mention of his wives (two of them) and children as though they were purely incidental to his life. I would be very interested to read their memoirs and experiences of him as husband and father ...
Unfortunately when he joins the world of academia it becomes all rather tedious even, I would imagine, for the literati. He suffers badly from impostor syndrome, fails miserably at interviews and seems to succeed despite himself.
His is also not the first male memoir I have read which omits almost all mention of his wives (two of them) and children as though they were purely incidental to his life. I would be very interested to read their memoirs and experiences of him as husband and father ...
December 14, 2013
Usually a biography is an intimate reflection of a life lived. This being an Autobiography vs. a Biography it is usually expected to be reflective to the point that the reader can’t close the book without coming away with a better insight into the writer. In this biography that is certainly not the case. I wondered at the conclusion why Mr. Kermode had written it. That being said it is a very good refection on a life of an academic, but not one wears his heart on his sleeve or who suffers "fools" gladly. He is certainly a died-in the wool academic/writer that keeps his cards close to the chest and constantly asks “… can memory be trusted?” He speaks virtually nothing of his private life i.e. marriage, children etc. with full concentration of youth in Isle of Man, Naval career (WWII) and various academic/writing appointments. The Naval portion is most interesting, what an adventure? (frankly shocking in it candour on Naval leadership or lack thereof). My favourite portion is the Isle of Mann years and his formation (whether he likes it not!). The academic years are more a musing on pedagogical approaches to teaching with the odd juicy bit about the halls of learning (Cambridge doesn’t come out well!!). A reluctant biographer but a writer on Shakespeare that I rank as one of the very best. It is worth the time but its a reluctant biography!
May 31, 2011
I read this due to having come across his name in my Milton reading; & also to having read articles in the NY Review of Books.
John Updike called it "a witty & rueful exercise in self-deprecation," & that it surely is. It is also decidedly odd, as a "memoir," in that it leaves out all description of his three (?) wives & his children.
Instead, it talks a great deal about his role in the Second War -- in some ways as unwarlike an account of that stupendous conflict as I've ever come across.
He was about 75 when he wrote it; I am now about to be 69. So I have some interest in how he saw his life & his ... well, he never seems to call them successes. I like him, but do not delude myself that I know very much about him ... which was doubtless precisely the effect he intended.
John Updike called it "a witty & rueful exercise in self-deprecation," & that it surely is. It is also decidedly odd, as a "memoir," in that it leaves out all description of his three (?) wives & his children.
Instead, it talks a great deal about his role in the Second War -- in some ways as unwarlike an account of that stupendous conflict as I've ever come across.
He was about 75 when he wrote it; I am now about to be 69. So I have some interest in how he saw his life & his ... well, he never seems to call them successes. I like him, but do not delude myself that I know very much about him ... which was doubtless precisely the effect he intended.
May 17, 2015
Well, my 2015 swing through autobiographies began with the realization that your story is likely better told by someone else.
I'm not sure there's an academic I love more than Frank Kermode, who writes about secrets and memory, but he won't let himself past his first, hard 20 years of poverty and wandering, in Manx, in the British Navy (from Iceland, to Seattle -- all deadly boring), through graduate school and tenure. There are two or three thoughts about novels and poems, all reticent, none leaking any joy. But maybe that was his right, to not tell his story magically. At its worst, it's flat and historical and at it's best, it's only sad.
I'm not sure there's an academic I love more than Frank Kermode, who writes about secrets and memory, but he won't let himself past his first, hard 20 years of poverty and wandering, in Manx, in the British Navy (from Iceland, to Seattle -- all deadly boring), through graduate school and tenure. There are two or three thoughts about novels and poems, all reticent, none leaking any joy. But maybe that was his right, to not tell his story magically. At its worst, it's flat and historical and at it's best, it's only sad.
October 9, 2012
I was interested in this book only because I learned that Frank Kermode also spent his childhood on the Isle of Man where Fletcher Christian lived as a boy, of course many years previously. However I got a feel for
earlier times in that place and discovered that Kermode's parents were still speaking Manx when he was young. When he joined the service I quit reading the book.
earlier times in that place and discovered that Kermode's parents were still speaking Manx when he was young. When he joined the service I quit reading the book.
June 22, 2011
I like Kermode's criticism, particularly The Sense of an Ending and The Genesis of Secrecy and his articles in the New York Review of Books, so I enjoyed learning a bit about him from his own perspective.
March 23, 2009
This is a great memoir.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews