My Father and Myself

by J.R. Ackerley

Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 978-8845915253, ISBN-10/ASIN: 8845915255

La morte del padre e la scoperta dei suoi segreti dà al figlio la spinta per rivelare quella parte di sé che gli aveva sempre celato: la propria omosessualità, raccontata in un tono asciutto, ironico, idiosincratico, con il tocco di un maestro della prosa. Mio padre e io, avviato negli anni Trenta e composto in gran parte negli anni Sessanta, apparve postumo nel 1968.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Biography, Queer, Gay, Biography Memoir

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Joe Randolph "J. R." Ackerley was a British writer and editor. Starting with the BBC the year after its founding in 1927, he was promoted to literary editor of The Listener, its weekly magazine, where he served for more than two decades.

He published many emerging poets and writers who became influential in Great Britain. He was openly gay, a rarity in his time when homosexuality was forbidden by law and socially ostracized.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book! Father and son are a fascinating pair.

Ackerley's rather famous for his numerous and unsatisfying raids on the rough trade and excursions amongst the Guardsmen in and around Victoria and Knightsbridge. We know that he eventually finds happiness with an Alsation (and "Alsation" isn't polari for something more interesting). The focus here is his father. We learn that he was known as "the Banana King" (which also isn't polari for something more interesting); he was, in fact, an early director at Fyffes, the company we all know and love from the stickers on our bananas. We see Ackerley Senior as a charming, well-to-do man with a grey Edward VII bowler, a beautiful wife, two strapping sons and assuredly hetero.

Of course, there were always whisperings that all was not as it seemed in his father's life but it was only after his death that J.R. was told, in a couple of letters, that there was another family just up the road. A "secret orchard" of three charming daughters. So charming, in fact, one of them went on to marry a future Duke of Westminster! Ackerley Junior also learnt that, a Guardsmen from the age of 16, his father seems to have been bought out by the millionaire homosexual the Comte de Gallatin! They then lived together for the next five years and only fell out when Ackerley wanted to marry (someone else, of course. A woman. It was 1888.)

The things Ackerley and his father could have talked about, if only they'd been frank with each other!

But I agree with Auden, who writes the introduction to the NYRB edition, that it's difficult to see that their relationship could have been much improved upon. There's absolutely no doubt Senior knew everything about Junior, with all of the sailor friends and young men in eye make-up coming to tea. So I'm not sad for either of them and it's nice to have read this after his other books because now I'm starting to think J.R. wasn't such a sad sack after all. And he had sex with Ivor Novello! Having sex with a famous heartthrob is something to smile about, I don't care who you are.


"In a few years' time I myself might be sighted in London dressed in a voluminous black carabiniero's cloak, cast over one shoulder in the Byronic manner, and trailed by children calling out rude remarks."

"While they were scratching away, like hens, with their trench tools, at the hard French soil, the Germans counter-attacked in considerable strength, firing from the hip as they advanced. The very sight of them was enough for my company. Rising as one man they deserted me and bolted. I bolted after, shouting 'Stop!' - not that I wanted them to. The vain word may have taken a shriller note when a bullet struck me in the bottom, splintering my pelvis, as was discovered later, and dealing me a wound where, my father had sometimes remarked, echoing Siward, no good soldier should bear one. With a flying leap that Nureyev might have envied I landed in a shell-hole which already contained one of the things I most detested, a corpse, and was soon to harbor another wounded officer named Facer, and a man bleeding to death of a stomach wound."

"It was a wounding word, but kinder than the right one."

"indeed it took one's breath away, and if you take people's breath away much else goes with it. Retrospective memory is flummoxed, tears become absurd, recrimination knows not where to begin;"

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truman Capote did declare this the "most original autobiography I have ever read." I'd have to agree that it is certainly a unique and rewarding book!

Nowadays we’d call the format a memoir, and the narrative covers the author's early years (pre-World War I), his war years, and then mostly the 1920s and 30s. His relationship with his father is explored in depth — as much depth as was possible since only after his father's death did Joe Ackerley (the author) discover his father's secret life, and start to probe the mysterious relationships his father had with older wealthy men when he was a young handsome soldier.

Joe's own personal life also involved many soldiers, sailors, and policemen, because at the time, like many gay men of the day, he was mostly attracted to straight men.

Joe was a great friend of E.M. Forster, and is frequently mentioned in the wonderful biography of Forster, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster.

Ackerley's memoir does record history, and quite frankly documents attitudes and lifestyles in the 1920s among MSM ("men who have sex with men" to use a modern acronym that covers a lot of territory and sweeps aside more confining or exclusionary labels).

I've wanted to read this memoir for years, but somehow it never fell into my hands. Now I can say that for anyone interested in this personal story, a family mystery, and also the culture in England before and after the First World War, as well as the lifestyles of marginalized minorities, this memoir will be highly rewarding.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've ever read. I've only just finished reading it for the second time. I'm still in shock and awe. Such a story. Such a candid and engaging chronicle of one man's life and also the life of his father.

Ackerley was a pioneer of "gay" literature. This is his masterpiece (without question). A more open and honest depiction of a gay man's sexual life (his likes and dislikes, his promiscuity, sexual incontinence, and his endless search for "the ideal friend")hadn't yet been written. Published the year after Ackerley's death, this book (and Crisp's "The Naked Civil Servant") clearly inspired a generation of gay writers.

Beautifully detailed, "My Father and Myself" is a unique memoir. I'd like to tell you all the details of the story, shocking and poignant. However, the pleasures this volume provides are in its revelations - to elaborate too much would spoil the fun. A soldier in WWI (and a prisoner of war), a lover of Ivor Novello, a private secretary to a Maharajah, a close friend of E. M. Forster - Ackerley's story is never dull or stodgy. "My Father and Myself" is a timeless treasure.

[Merilee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautifully written memoir by the former literary editor of the BBC magazine was published in 1968, with an intro by W.H. Auden, but mostly written 20 or more years earlier. Ackerley depicts his homosexual feelings and experiences in a manner which was fairly shocking for its time. He also tries to understand his relationship with his father (as well as his mother, siblings, and other family members) during a time when family members were not terribly open with each other - sometimes they still are not. The Auden intro has many spoilers so it is best read as an afterword. I thoroughly enjoyed Ackerley's My Dog Tulip, another memoir (he finally finds love with an "Alsatian bitch"), which I read years ago.

[Marijan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no idea how I came to hear about this title, I put it on my bookreads shelf a long time ago and by chance, trying to organize my shelves, decided to give it a go. It was short, a memoir about a gay person in the early 20th century, a perfect antidote to the overlong and messy Moonglow by Michael Chabon which I was struggling with for almost 2 months. This one I devoured in a few days, I was reading it on the metro, in uber, going up and down the elevator, every chance I could get. Not because it was edge of the seat reading, but because it was so simple yet engaging, with prose as clear as water.

I'm not sure if anyone who is not gay will find this of much interest but I think it should be on every gay person's to read list, if nothing more, to see how far we have come (and yet still have a lot further to go) and at the same time how little things change (primarily in the realities of everyday gay life). And it's fascinating to read how (relatively) progressive British society was, if not in law, then in fact, regarding homosexuality. But it's a melancholy read, since the prejudices that abounded (and still abound today) were clearly, even in the most progressive parts of society, such as the upper middle class one Ackerley belonged to, too strong for men like him to resist. It's sad to think how many people were and are forced to live unhappy and restricted lives because other people mind very much what they do in the bedroom.

I suppose that, when it came out, posthumously unfortunately, in the late sixties, it must have caused a great deal of prurient interest, but, sorry to disappoint you, compared with today's standards, his depictions of his sexual experiences (which take up about 15% of the book) are positively puritanical. But what is most interesting about this memoir, at least for me, and what keeps it so contemporary, is Ackerley's facility for self-reflection and objective analysis of his own character, actions and motivations (to a certain limit, which he himself acknowledges). He doesn't shy away from self-criticism and exposing some quite unflattering aspects of his personality (I suppose given the posthumous nature of the release, it took a bit less courage to do that). The unconventional character and history of his family also provided pliant material for an engaging read. It is considered, sincere, clear and well structured and deserves its place in the upper echelons of the LGBTQ literary cannon.

However, if you've gotten this far in reading this review, I would urge you NOT to read W.H. Auden's introduction (I guess it was a review that the publisher then tacked on as an introduction), which, aside from being riddled with spoilers, is so archaic (with gems like: "Few, if any, homosexuals can honestly boast that their sex-life has been happy" or "the eternal and, probably, insoluble problem for the homosexual is finding a substitute for the natural differences, anatomical and psychic, between a man and a woman.") that it sets an entirely wrong tone for the book, since Ackerley himself, as an "out and proud" gay man (admittedly, of his time, with all the baggage that entailed) was far beyond making any kind of judgement on homosexuality or the capacity of gay men to lead happy lives, even in those times, and attributes his failure in this respect to his own personal flaws rather than any flaws in his sexual orientation. Hopefully in any future editions of this book this loathsome piece of writing will be removed and replaced with something more appropriate.

[Michael Belcher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the hospital cafeteria tapioca of memoirs. And that’s doing a disservice to hospital cafeteria tapioca. Its dull prurience and unrevealing revelation may have felt bold or even scandalous in Ackerley’s time, but today it feels hopelessly conservative and exceptionally bland. The kind of story one might tell at a dinner party and get a vague “mmm” of surprise. Ackerley spends nearly the same amount of time pointing out what he doesn’t remember as lingering on rote disturbances in his familial and personal lives, and he himself eventually compares his memoir to “wastepaper.” The most intriguing elements, which revolve around his father’s potential youthful dalliances with an older man, remain obscured by a lack of evidence. Even worse, his views on femininity and masculinity, though one can appreciate his honesty, are dated and insulting. One might hope the writing could salvage some of the reader’s wasted time, but there are only a few glimmers of insight, such as the author’s intense self-scrutiny in the Appendix or when, late in the memoir, Ackerley writes, “anger is as valuable as alcohol for the communication of home truths.” The rest is a wasteland of saltine-cracker prose. A fitting pairing, perhaps, with this tapioca tale.

[Philip Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about a relationship between father and son - although in reality it is about the lack of a relationship as seems to be the case in so many fathers/sons. I feel that I want to edit this so that it takes on a more exciting form - as Ackerley junior only found out about his father's secret life very late on it would have been better to have kept it secret from the reader until much later in the book. However it seems that J.R.Ackerley felt so very guilty and ashamed of his own sexual proclivities that he wanted the reader to know very early on that his father was just as bad if not worse. The book brings out the whole pitiful situation of cloak and dagger, pain and torment that are caused by covering up true sexual feelings. Puritanical regimes are just as likely to create excruciatingly twisted relationships as liberal ones are to allow instability. It may be a caricature but unfortunately one which has almost become a cliche that the author's only time of happiness is when he has a stable relationship with his dog. Is this why England is a nation of pet lovers? Becuase they have such difficulty with human relationships?? A very English book.

[Robert Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ackerley's work in "My Father and Myself" is deemed a masterpiece by reviewers. No doubt when released in the late 1960's it was scandalous, new and fresh. A homosexual man trying to explain or analyze (no pun intended) the reasons he could never establish any kind of intimate relationship with his father, while simultaneously detailing his own despondent search for the "Ideal Friend."

The book is very well written, but the story itself may seem less astonishing in this day and age of the recovery memoir, or other variations on shocking family secrets.

Ackerley, given 30 years of retrospect, is able to apply a degree of unvarnished introspection unlike any other I've read yet... "unable, it seemed, to reach sex through love, I started upon a long quest in pursuit of love through sex."

"Though two or three-hundred young men were to pass through my hands in the course of years, I did not consider myself promiscuous but monogamous, it was all a run of bad luck, and they became ever more serious over this as time went on."

... and offer profound observation of the human experience in frequent, clever turns of phrase like, "...the letter is written in anger, but anger is as valuable as alcohol for the communication of home truths" or this report of chastisement leaving school one day:

"'Pride will have a fall, Ackerley! Pride will have a fall.' Rebukes such as this are too seldom administered; I never forgot this shocking remark and think always with respect of the now anonymous man who troubled himself to make it."

The style is reportorial where it is not mercilessly introspective. There is no dialogue and no scene work to speak of. The author is careful to note where he is unsure of details, where memories are fuzzy, and where he is forced to speculate.

I embarked on reading this story because the plot synopsis I read elsewhere indicated it may offer insights to aid me in the telling of my own memoir: a deep family secret, confided to a sister by a mother whose vault is becoming progressively less secure, is relayed to the author to explosive ends. He must struggle with how to tell the story of something that unfolded over 30 years of writing. He must jumble up the chronology in order to make the story function as narrative. And he does this supremely well.

In Ackerley's case, he received letters from his dead father marked, "To be read only upon my demise," which informed the author that Dad had been keeping a secret family with three half-sisters, a few blocks away from home in London.

In the end, I did glean some insight into potential ways to handle my story. I was concerned over not having a sufficient "moral" or "summary of wisdom" to close the book. When Ackerley closes with a whimper, I became heartened that if a Masterpiece can end thus, so might my book.

In utter self-deprecation, he says the memoir belongs with his mother's luggage, in which he discovered after her death reams and reams of trash paper, some bound and wrapped as if important.

"That was my mother's comment on life. It might serve also as a comment on this family memoir, which belongs, I am inclined to think, to her luggage. A good many questions have been asked, few receive answers. Some facts have been established, much else may well be fiction, the rest is silence. Of my father, my mother, myself, I know in the end practically nothing. Nevertheless I preserve it, if only because it offers a friendly, unconditional response to my father's plea in his posthumous letter: 'I hope people will generally be kind to my memory.'"

I withhold the fifth star rating because of the flat ending, as well as because the raves over this book are likely borne of its time. Timing is a good thing, as this book was released posthumously in America, just as homosexuality was breaking into some degree of more common discussion.

[Pascale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is unusually candid, and at the same time unusually forthright and effective in its debunking of the myth that memoirs can be candid. From the foreword where he explains that the revelations in his story were spaced "for maximum individual effect", Ackerley never lets us forget that the family saga he presents to us, although as accurate in its details as he could possibly make it, is above all a confection governed by narrative principles. So while telling us the real story of how he discovered after the fact that his father led a double life, in a way which we know doesn't correspond to the actual chronology of how he made this discovery, he manages to make us reflect constantly on the the relationship between truth and lies, confession and obfuscation, art and life. What Ackerley eventually discovered is that his father had a mistress and 3 daughters he had never heard of. What he never manages to ascertain is whether, before he married for the first time, his father had had male lovers. All the things he fails to learn about his father he could have learnt if only he had talked to the guy and/or shown interest in time. Like many family memoirs, this one is largely written as an act of contrition towards the father he largely ignored while he was alive, and it is fueled by the burning regret it leaves to start enquiring and caring far too late, But he doesn't fall into the common trap of believing that, if he had not left it so late, everything would have been illuminated, and ends with the following statement, which I find absolutely superb: "A good many questions have been asked, few receive answers. Some facts have been established, much else may well be fiction, the rest is silence. Of my father, my mother, myself, I know in the end practically nothing." I believe this statement to be both truthful and true, and yet after closing this book I felt I knew Ackerley better than I know most people I meet every day, and that I also know myself a little bit better. What more can you ask from a book?

[Ken Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read it 20 years ago it blew me away with its revelations and family mechanics. I've read so many memoirs since then that I was not sure what I would think, but it still held up. However, toward the end I could relate to the policeman friend who sends a letter pleading for mercy after years of listening to Ackerley whine endlessly (but wittily, I'm sure) about his unidentified Ideal Friend. As painfully honest as the book is, one rather suspects he's concealing a few 'Secret Gardens' of his own, and left this ridiculous appendix in just to try and throw any hounds off the trail. Still I think this continues to be read for good reason as the book does an excellent job documenting social pressures that prevail to this day in a very entertaining manner.

[Anthony Lipmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this memoir because a number of books by, or about, Ackerley were on my uncle's (in fact godfather's) shelves. I was curious as to who he was. Reading it in the space of a few days, I know more. As memoir, it marks itself out for graphic honesty in high degree. At core, a writer dismembering the pain of homosexuality at a time where there was no peace to be had if you were queer. Within the tale is the search for his father. You could say the autobiography is a queer version of Edmund Gosse's 'Father and Son'. But beside that story is the unflinching account of his time in the trenches, a perspective unforgettable, where in 1916 he finds himself as the commanding officer of his brother. In all the literature of the First World War (of which I have read much) the passages about the Somme will remain burned on me. I will not say why. Just read it. The hunt for his father's mystery drives the memoir forward and is only partly solved. My godfather, Eric's old Norfolk surname was 'Bugg'. When Eric became a CO in the WWII he was briefly disowned by his family for the shame. Ackerley writes: 'I was romantic about homosexuality then, 'bugger' was a coarse, rude, objectionable word I did not care for and never used except as joke. I could not allow it be applied to myself or my friends'. My uncle, who was involved with the creation of the peace sign was born Eric Austen Bugg. For the reasons above he dropped his surname and became Eric Austen, in which name he became my treasured uncle, and whose story I am now writing.

[Vicent Flor Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recomanat pel bon lector i amic Vicent Guillamon Payà, he llegit estes memòries del crític anglés J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967), que tenen interés per a entendre la vida d'un homosexual nascut a finals del segle XIX, la qual cosa no era gens fàcil. De fet, conta els seus problemes psicològics, que passaren, entre d'altres, de les pors per l'ejaculació precoç a les pors per la impotència.

En realitat, descobrim com d'important és una sexualitat satisfactòria per a la felicitat humana i com el control social excessiu de la sexualitat ha portat tristesa i frustracions pertot. I, per això, tot i que no faré spoiler, es narra la història del pare, malalt de sífilis i amb una heterosexualitat també complexa.

Però al llibre hi ha molt més, un retrat incisiu de les relacions familiars i, també, de la guerra (va participar en la Primera Guerra Mundial i va perdre un germà en la contesa, a més de molts amants).

"Mi padre y yo" (Editorial Anagrama, comprat a la preciosa Llibreria Ramon Llull) no agradarà a tothom però és un llibre que ajuda a comprendre les relacions humanes, que no és poca cosa.

#elsmeusllibres

[Ben Hofmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited when I found this book at a used book shop in Hollywood across from the Scientology celebrity center, because it's classified as queer studies, and pertains to some dude's relationship with his father. What it ends up being, though, is just his man hunt to see if his dad "went to bed" with men. In telling it, you get a glimpse at just how misogynistic, predatory, and self-hating the author is. (It doesn't really help that he's somewhat self-aware about it.)

This memoir was boring and nauseating and I would not recommend, unless your intention for reading, like mine, was to read about the thoughts of someone you know nothing about, in hopes that maybe one day your thoughts will also find their way to some unacquainted reader. I just hope if I were to ever write a memoir, it would not leave an impression on its reader like this book left on me.

[Brett Glasscock · Rating 1 out of 5]

hopelessly boring. the prose is both overwritten and dry, a rare combination. every chapter meanders through detail that has nothing to do with the major story. every major story beat is met with "i don't remember.." and "i have no evidence for this.." and, my personal least favorite "but this detail, i will expand more on later." it fails as a memoir; rather than situating the reader in events, it just abstractly says that certain events happen. paragraphs are pages long. cmon gay people we can do better than this!!

[Unburied Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

We can’t believe the time we had with the one and only Vivian Gornick. We discussed J. R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself, the author’s life, what makes a good memoir, and how our families’ stories effect our own. Hope you listen and enjoy!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6oSf...

[Nicolas Duran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully salacious and poignant, and really really funny. Glad I read it.

[Charly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forthright 1920's-30's autobiography/ memoir from a gay friend of EM Forster; detailed chronicles of his 'double' personal life & cultural facts. Interesting document of British Gay men's heritage.

[Martin Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I was rarely happy in any one place, for all the other places appeared, in my imagination, more rewarding than the one I occupied. The Ideal Friend was always somewhere else and might have been found if only I had turned a different way. The buses that passed my own bus seemed always to contain those charming boys who were absent from mine; the ascending escalators in the tubes fiendishly carried them past me as I sank helplessly into hell.”

[laasya]

Gay man has a gay dad who also has another family. Pretty good.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a separate review I profile Ackerley’s novel, We Think the World of You, should you wish to see my rationale for reading this man in the first place. My Father and Myself is a memoir published posthumously. In its pages Ackerley outlines his suspicions about his father’s life before marrying his mother.

He begins by examining some photographs that document his father’s friendship with a number of other handsome young men back at the turn of the twentieth century. As one who embraces his homosexuality (with hundreds of partners over several decades), Ackerley sets about to see if he can discover if his father wasn’t also gay. What makes him suspect? Well, for one, unlike many British men, his father seems not to possess the usual homophobia but rather indicates to Ackerley that he has the freedom to pursue whatever life he wishes. And Ackerley feels compelled to take his father’s advice:

“I was now on the sexual map and proud of my place on it. I did not care for the word ‘homosexual’ or any label, but I stood among the men, not among the women. Girls I despised; vain, silly creatures, how could their smooth soft, bulbous bodies compare in attraction with the muscular beauty of men? Their place was the harem, from which they should never have been released; true love, equal and understanding love, occurred only between men. I saw myself therefore in the tradition of the Classic Greeks, surrounded and supported by all the famous homosexuals of history—one soon sorted them out—and in time I became something of a publicist for the rights of that love that dare not speak its name” (154-5).

His understanding of his condition seems to belong to its largely misogynist period, eh? But he is indeed living his life with a certain guilt-free abandon that was not to be widely duplicated until the 1970s. He also confesses to throwing aside certain individuals in search of his ignis fatuus. Yes, always, he’s in search of his Ideal Friend, a perfect lover, one he never finds.

The climax of the memoir may occur when Ackerley tells of searching out one of his father’s old buddies, one who is now near death. After heckling the elderly man with the question of whether his father may have liked men, he finally shouts at Ackerley, “Oh, lord, you’ll be the death of me! I think he did once say he’d had some sport with him [Count de Gallatin]. But me memory’s like a saucer with the bottom out” (262).

But Ackerley is still unsure. “May have” simply isn’t enough proof for him. The book is complete with an Appendix that dares to speak its name more graphically about Ackerley’s sexual difficulties. In all, the memoir is one of those fascinating books one should read: witty, devilish, and yet sad, too. Though Ackerley acts “freely” for his context, a dangerously homophobic England, he never quite achieves an approximation of happiness. One hopes that gay men never again have to live in such gloom anywhere on this earth. It simply isn’t fair.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every NYRB Classic I've read up 'til this one has been a stunner--so it was with disappointment that I felt my attention slipping away from "My Father and Myself" fairly early on. Twice recently, though, I've soldiered on through initially slow-moving books only to be delighted that I had. The premise of this memoir beguiled me, and I'd read that it unfolds as a hereditary mystery with Ackerley as sleuth. Many of the book's surprises, however, were spoiled by W. H. Auden's introduction, which extracted much of the narrative's propulsion. As a result, I was reminded of Alison Bechdel's recent "Are You My Mother?": most of the book's revelations were of greater importance to the author than to the reader. Ackerley writes humor very well, and I found myself laughing loudly a few times in spite (or because?) of the dryness of the narrative that precedes his particularly quippy descriptions or turns of phrase. I had to really work to finish this book, though, and that's never a good feeling.

[Abby Howell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that in order to appreciate this book, you have to have read Ackerley's other work. Which I haven't. The book is very narrowly focused--Ackerley's experiences in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's as a middle class gay man in England. As well as the secret life he finds out about his father, after his father's death. I think that it must have been a very brave book to write, but it bothered me that we only get this fact and that fact and then another fact. No social context whatsoever. Like maybe worrying about getting caught? It was illegal in England at the time. And he even, at the end of the book, writes about his mother's house being bombed, without even mentioning WWII. Which makes me think I am missing something--maybe information that was written in his other memoirs. And I also have not read or seen his plays, which, again, may add context to the book. I'm glad I read it, but I found the writing really stilted, and the information raising more questions than answering them.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ackerley remains a bit obscure, despite his brilliance as a writer. His entire output is half a dozen works, mostly memoirs, two of them about his dog, his relationship with whom he freely describes as the most emotionally fulfilling of his life (like Gore Vidal, he liked to keep the sex mostly superficial and uncomplicated by romance).
He worked for the BBC for 30 years, mostly editing their literary magazine The Listener which put him in the thick of the mid-20th century English literary world. This memoir was published posthumously and although the facts of his father's life are fascinating (after his death he was revealed to be one of those men with two wives and sets of children on opposite sides of the city), the elegance and clarity of Ackerley's prose feels like it could any make story worth hearing.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishing memoir. Written by a man born in 1896 (either side of my two grandparents) and yet so modern that the author could have been sitting across the table talking to me today about unvarnished life and sex and in today's language! Even today, much of what is written would be considered "bracing", but it allows us to peek into the lives and mores of late Victorian and Edwardians that is probably unique. And yes, it is beautifully written as well. No wonder it was not published until after the author's death, and no wonder it became an instant classic. On a side note, nonchalantly recounting his experiences in the Great War, and what he saw and endured, I thought of how well today's snowflakes would cope. Not well, not well at all, is my guess!

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book a lot more touching that I thought I would. The author’s unflinching portrayal of his life, honest about his literary failures and even sexual problems, was completely disarming and provoked a sense of great trust being placed in the reader. It is in this atmosphere of confidence that Ackerley’s candid retelling of the difficult (non-existent?) relationship with his father seemed so sad. By lowering any guards towards his own pride Ackerley also allows the reader to take his confessions and apply them as a mirror to themselves, making the reader examine not only their relationships with their parents, lovers but even their aspirations in life. The result is a very engaging and pensive work that seems a fitting tribute to the life he describes.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must rank as one of the most candid autobiographies* out there. Very valuable, too, as a source of historical information about pre-Stonewall homosexuality. Entertaining.

[*The author insists the book is not actually meant to be one; it is rather the account of how his father and himself failed to ever get to know each other deeply, despite getting along. Yet, when you close the book you feel that you thoroughly got to know the author and learnt about what mattered to him, as well as the defining moments and turning points in his life. This, in my opinion, makes it more autobiography than anything else.]

[JOSEPH OLIVER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you know nothing of the man and his work this book is well worth a read for an insight into the life of a gay man in the beginning of the 20th century which breaks the stereotype of men in similar situations.It is also a very frank exposition of his relationship - or lack of it - with his father who comes across, despite his son's prejudices as a very 21st century man. Fundamentally they had little middle ground on which to establish any other sort of relationship except based on blood. Plenty of men in that bracket.

[Carla]

Ackerley set out to write a book that somehow explained his distant relationship from his father, and along the way, wrote much about his (Ackerley's) own lonely brand of homosexuality. As with all Ackerley, the style is impeccable, really cannot do better; and the way in which Ackerley reveals his father's mysterious past, masterful. But there's a coldness at the core of the enterprise, which is (and Ackerley doesn't hide this) the absence of love for either his father or his mother, which seems to carry forward in Ackerley's future life. It's a sad book.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent memoir. British writer/editor, Joe Randolph "J. R." Ackerley (11/1896--6/1967) promoted to literary editor of 'The Listener' weekly magazine. I found the beginning strange because his parents, in younger days, hadn't been married, (WHY?) only when J.R. was thirteen years old. We learn about JR and his secretive, gay relationships.

[Wolfram-Jaymes Keesing · Rating 1 out of 5]

A one star review deserves an explanation, right? Well I don't know what to tell you. Gone is the age when old, rich dudes can sit down and write to me about how rubbish their life was. I need substance. I need something relatable. I need more than the tale of a life impeded primarily by the person living it.