The Gatekeeper: A Memoir

by Terry Eagleton

Often scathingly funny, frequently tender, and always completely engaging, The Gatekeeper is Terry Eagleton's memoirs, his deep-etched portraits of those who influenced him, either by example or by contrast: his father, headmasters, priests, and Cambridge dons. He was a shy, bookish, asthmatic boy keenly aware of social inferiority yet determined to make his intellectual way. The Gatekeeper mixes the soberly serious with the downright hilarious, skewer-sharp satire with unashamed fondness, the personal with the political. Most of it all it reveals a young man learning to reconcile oppositions: a double-edged portrait of the intellectual as a young man.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Philosophy, Religion, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Widely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.

He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.

Reviews

[Fahima Jaffar]

برُؤيةٍ حاذقةٍ ولغةٍ لاذعة، يستعيد إيغلتن ذكرياته منذ طفولته كحارسٍ في أحد الأديرة حتى دراسته في كامبردج -التي يبدو أنه لا يكنّ لها شديد حبّ- . سرده ممتع وَقياساته ظريفةٌ كالعادة، وهو يجمع هنا -كما يفعل في أغلب كتاباته- بين الفكرة الذكيّة وَاللغة الساخرة اللاذعة. قد لا يهم كثيراً مدى صحة حكاياته -وأظنه يدرك ذلك جيداً- بقدر يهم نجاحه في إمتاع المتلقي بما يرسم من شخصيّات كاريكاتورية ذات نفحةٍ "دِكنزيّة".

الترجمة جيدة لكنها كان يجب أن تخضع لبعض المراجعة قبل الطباعة. ثمة أخطاء نحوية وَتركيبية كان يمكن لمراجعةٍ دقيقة أن تنقذها.

[Nizar · Rating 4 out of 5]

(لا أستطيع الجزم بكل تأكيد) لن يكتب أحد مذكراته بهذه الطريقة اللاذعة، الساخرة، الماهرة إلا تيري إيغلتون. هنا، كأنك في جلسة حميمة مع تيري، فالأسلوب المعتمد خالٍ تمامًا من إقحام المشاعر عنوة وتلقيمها للقارئ بالملعقة. هو حوار سلس جدًا.

يحكي لنا تيري قصته مع الراهبات (والذي كان حارسًا لبوابة دير لهن عندما كان طفلًا)، ويستعرض أفكاره عن علم الاجتماع والأدب والطبقات الاجتماعية، يحدثنا عن أوكسبريدج (أوكسفورد وكامبردج) حيث يدخلنا في أعماق ومكونات الأرستقراطية الأوكسبريدجية، وكيف لإنسان من طبقة اجتماعية مختلفة جدًا أن يتعايش مع هذه الحالة.

تيري إيغلتون حالة فريدة جدًا، وهذا الكتاب حالة فريدة كتيري.

"لم أكن أمتلك إلا رصيدي اللغوي لكي أرتفع من حمأة الطبقة العاملة. إن اللغة لا تكلف شيئًا، وما دام الأمر يتعلق بالكلمت هناك دائمًا المزيد."

[Duaa Issa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"إن علم الاجتماع، وهو دراسة ما هو مُبتذل، ويتكرر حدوثه، وقابل للتوقع في الحياة الإنسانية، هو في الأساس دراسة المقولات المبتذلة.

وقول: "أحبك"، هو علم اجتماع صرف، مهما قالها المرء بصدق. بالنسبة إلى الرومانسيين، من المأساة أن نُجبر على التعبير عن مشاعرنا الشخصية الأشد فرادة بعبارات باهتة استهلكها ملايين آخرون..
وذات مرة سمعتُ عالم اجتماع يحكي كيف دخل إلى قسمه في الجامعة فوجد سكرتيرته تذرف الدموع. وبعد أن بذل أقصى جهده لمواساتها، خرج ليتمشى على طول الرواق، فألقى نظرة على غرفة مكتب أخرى، فإذا به يجد سكرتيرة أخرى تبكي.
فعلّق قائلاً: "إن سكرتيرة واحدة تبكي هي مأساة، أما اثنتان فعلم اجتماع"، على الرغم من أنه ليس واضحاً لماذا لا تُضاعف سكرتيرتان تبكيان المأساة بدل أن تُخفِّف من تأثيرها".

[Haneen Albahis · Rating 3 out of 5]

وقع بيدي مصادفة في معرض الكتاب، تصفحته ووجدته مشوقا خلاف حالتي عندما بدأت بقرائته، تجرعته حتى الصفحة ٦٠ ثم أخذت أتفصحه بشكلٍ سريع. لا بأس به غير أنه مررت بصعوبات في استساغته بالبداية. مجموعة مقالات شخصية مندرجة تحت عناوين معينة. أفضل الاقتباسات التي وجدتها:
"والانتحار أيضًا مسألة شخصيّة، بينما الشهادة هي نوعٌ من تحويل المرء موته إلى قضيّة اجتماعية، هي وضعهُ تحتَ تصرف الآخرين"
-
"والمرضُ والذكاءُ معًا يساهمانِ في عزلِ المرءِ عن الحياةِ العامة"

[- قارئة . · Rating 3 out of 5]

مذكرات بأسلوب ساخر ولطيف وغير ممل
لم ينجو من سخريته أحد
من بريخت الى فنغشتاين
وحتى الملكة نفسها 😂

تمنيت لو تطول قليلا
ف ١٩٠ صفحة على هكذا سخرية قليلة !

[Bashayer]

لأكثر من أسبوع أحاول مغالبة الملل وكل ماقرأته هو نصف الكتاب فقط.

[James Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure how many Catholics become self-proclaimed radicals, but Terry Eagleton claims that he is one of them. He attempts to write about his personal history 'in such a way as to outwit the prurience and immodesty of the genre by frustrating your own desire for self-display and the reader's desire to enter your inner life'. Most of The Gatekeeper, though, comes dangerously close to non-autobiography. It's a refusal of the genre more than a transformation of it. Eagleton organizes the book as a series of themed essays, writing outward from his own experience. The results would be easier to read and enjoy if he didn't limit basic data to such sparse parcels. His mother is known to the reader for half the book only by a description of her as a 'convent groupie', his father as a downtrodden worker who knew no better than to pay the bus fares of nuns and priests better off than himself.
More details of a hideously deprived Catholic childhood in Salford emerge in the chapter called 'Losers', but no siblings are named, and even their existence has to be deduced. It's possible to finish the book with no sense of the author's place in the birth order, a factor on which whole theories of personality have been built. The first essay, 'Lifers', explains the title. Eagleton, aged 10, was an altar-boy whose duties included attending novice nuns when they took the veil. He would also be called upon to man the convent turntable, through which privileged objects (such as Timothy the watchdog) could pass back and forth between sacred and profane realms. 'Gatekeeper' doesn't really sum up Eagleton's role in later life, any more than gatecrasher does, though he is highly conscious of having entered a world wholly at odds with anything his parents knew. The book impresses one as the case for a sort of socialist Franciscan emerges.
Eagleton writes satirically about the follies of 'the group', as if he was born into it, and had no possibility of influencing its internal workings. It's understandable that he should want to avoid score-settling and minute tracings of faction, but removing himself from an autobiographical text is an impossible solution.

[aljouharah · Rating 3 out of 5]

اخذت الكتاب بالخطأ ظناً مني انه رواية كنت قد توقفت عن قراءتها منذ عدة سنين عن يتيم وذكرياته في منزل كان يعيش مع حارسه.
الأمر الذي عرفني على تيري إيغلتون: الكاتب اليساري اللاذع والشرس وانطباعاته الحياته بطريقة المذكرات..
ضحكت كثيراً عندما بدأ بالحديث عن الجامعات ومنسوبيها المبجلين،الأمر لايتغير شرق العالم أو غربه كما يبدو xD

[Huda Alotaibi · Rating 3 out of 5]

عبارة عن مذكرات مكتوبة بطريقة غير متسلسلة، ضمن مواضيع عامة مثل مفكرون، سياسيون، فاشلون، وأرستقراطيون وغيرهاوتحت كل موضوع يذكر المؤلف جانب من سيرته الشخصية المتعلقة به.
الأسلوب الطريف للمؤلف يشدّ القارئ وخاصة الموضوع الأخير.
الترجمة جيدة وخاصة في توضيح بعض المفردات الأدبية.

[Kulthoum كلثوم · Rating 2 out of 5]

قرأتها على أنها سيرة ذاتية، لكني أقول أنها سيرة انتقائية جدا من الذاكرة، وتوجه القارئ إلى اتجاهاته الفكرية كماركسي كأولوية في حياته قبل اعتزازه كآيرلندي .

مباشر بعيد عن التملق، صريح أشعرني بغرور علو فكره وآرائه حتى على أساتذته المخضرمين، وإن لم تكن شخص قادر أن تدحض أو تثبت لا فقط فكرة الغير بل أفكار المواضيع التي تؤمن بها أنت، فلا يمكن أن يهتم لنقاشاتك ولا حتى بشخصك  !

أعتقد أن السيرة هي جزء بسيط جدا جدا لمسيرة طويلة وحافلة للمؤلف، من غير الإنصاف الحكم عليه كشخصية واتجاه فكري وعملي منها فقط .

[هُـدىٰ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t say that I fully understood the book or Eagleton, and that is for two things; one is his highly academic language and the second is his political engagements. One thing was pretty clear to me though and that was his sardonic style of writing and the very sophisticated way by which he looks at life. I think this is exactly what captivated him in Oscar Wilde, who is pretty cynical too. I am not sure if I was right in my choice of such a read, since it is beyond my language level, but I enjoyed some parts of it.

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book but a few things worked against me in this goal: it was very British and class-conscious, and myself being neither of those, I wasn't able to relate to much of what he described. Also, the more I read, the less I found myself liking Mr. Eagleton. Maybe it was the hardened Marxism.

The one saving grace that kept me going until the end of this book was the quality of the writing and the truly hilarious observations and sarcastic wit.

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing life, full of deep thought. Had to laugh at his imagined epitaph for the family gravestone: "They were no trouble." Hoo-boy, that's not going to be him, though, as all things turn out. Previous experiences with Eagleton had been through literary criticism, and does he ever turn things inside out and outside in in order for us to see beyond shadows. This is a peep into his own garden.

[Paul Howlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book , I enjoyed his observations of the working class Catholic minority environment he grew up in, which he exchanged later for a Marxist outlook detaching him further from the Oxbridge ambient of the later parts of the book.

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking memoir by a self-described "leftist theologian" (7), whose "full-time occupation," is "peddling ideas to the masses," (71)and "an activist by conviction rather than by temperament, [who]would most certainly have preferred reading Proust to picketing." (91)

Of the Carmelite Nuns he worked for as a boy: "They clung to the quaintly outmoded view that there was too much cruelty and aggression in the world for it to be merely accidental, or solvable by piecemeal reform. They were thus freaks and deviants, at least from the standpoint of those moderate, reasonable folk who suspect that there is nothing much awry with the planet which a touch more mutual understanding, a spot of civil rights or a few more bags of grain might not patch up.... For them, the flaw of the world ran so deep that it cried out for some thoroughgoing transformation, known in their jargon as redemption." (14)

Of Catholicism: "Its esoteric doctrines seemed no more applicable to everyday life than trigonometry was applicable to pressing your trousers. Like magic, it was a highly determinate system but entirely self-confirming, with all the exceptional clarity of a hallucination. Catholicism was less about good deeds than about how to keep the charcoal in your thurible alight or knock another fifty years off your allotted time in purgatory. It was less about charity than candelabras. We were pious and heartless, strict-minded and mean, pure-living and pagan." (30)

Of Christianity: "For Christianity, one is saved not by some exotic cult or ritual, but by the quality of one’s ordinary, unglamorous relationships with others, by feeding the hungry and protecting the widows and orphans from the violence of the rich." (41)

Of Wittgenstein: " ... nothing could be more at odds with the pluralistic, demotic, open-ended inquiries of his later work than the man himself: autocratic, haughtily patrician, driven by a fatiguing zeal for moral perfection and afflicted by that strange mania known as Protestantism, for which everything is a potential sign of salvation or damnation. If only he had learned to be a little less moral, he might have been more assured of salvation." (66)

Of Jesus: "Jesus, friend of the shit of the earth ... is largely hostile to family values, has almost nothing to say about sexuality, and demands that we love strangers as much as we love our kinsfolk." (122)

Of Mormons: "Teaching Mormons about ideology is something of a coals-to-Newcastle operation, rather like instructing the Spice Girls in public relations or encouraging Mike Tyson to work up a bit of aggression." (147)

Of my natal city: "Hell would have been a welcome respite from Provo, Utah." (149)

And here are some of my favorite bon mots from this book:

"Equally science-fictional is the belief that capitalism will finally get round to feeding the world." (17)

"The difference between the young and the old is that the young still believe in the concept of maturity." (45)

"It is a sign of just how bad things are that even the modest proposal that everyone on the planet gets fresh water and enough to eat is fighting talk." (85)

"When in political doubt, the left intelligentsia throw a conference or launch a journal. There is nothing wrong with conferences, as long as one realizes that they are more anthropological rituals, at which the like-minded may gather for mutual recognition and consolation, than theatres for genuine learning. Conferences are liturgical celebrations, affirmations of solidarity, symbolic spaces for those who speak a language (whether of socialism or orthodontics) unintelligible to most of their fellow-humans, and who therefore need from time to time to relax with those of their kind, as a cross-dresser might feel the gathering urge to withdraw from the world of the bank or bakery and ease into a pair of corsets." (97-8)

"A radical is one who cannot overcome her astonishment that there are people in the world who believe, by and large, that this is it." (101)

"Poverty is not the best school for learning to savour things in themselves." (103)

"It is the good who will enter the kingdom, but the fine who make life worth living in the meanwhile." (106)

[Aran · Rating 2 out of 5]

In which Terry Eagleton picks and chooses; claims to loathe Oxbridge and the upper-classes while striving desperately to appear a raffish wit of precisely the Oxbridge type. Spiked with funny moments and the odd potent insight into culture's embedded elitisms, but Eagleton's own eagerness to embed himself within the elite he decries cannot so easily be brushed off by comparing himself, with cod-modesty, to Oscar Wilde and Wittgenstein.

[Josh Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Terry Eagleton book on my swing back to the Leftism of my early twenties, (slightly now more informed) I am simply giving this 5 stars because of the number of times I actually laughed out loud. His self deprecating humor in the Politicos section is regards to Dialectical Materialism makes this worth the quick read. As a bonus the section on the bygone generation of Oxbridge Dons is pretty funny too.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious. I guess it's a testament to his intellect that Terry Eagleton manages to seem like he's just running his thoughts off his tongue, never trying too hard, or waxing too eloquent. Makes quite a few jabs at pop culture (as always), but this is an amusing memoir if not an illuminating one.

Let's just say it makes you feel smarter after you read it.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable! Eagleton writes autobiography without revealing much about his personal life, as he writes about others doing. The result is irreverent and often hilarious, while also provoking thought about the individual's experience of formal education.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoir of a Catholic of Irish descent in Protestant England, a working-class boy whose professional life was spent at the heart of a ruling-class institution, a Marxist revolutionary who was not only tolerated, but rewarded by the liberal establishment.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. very smart and interesting.

[Alex]

The Gatekeeper : A Memoir by Terry Eagleton (2002)

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit tossed-off, reading rather like Eagleton recorded it in a few sittings and had it transcribed. But very entertaining, and occasionally quite moving, often very funny.

[Mohammed omran · Rating 2 out of 5]

مذكرات جميله بتحليل اخصائي اجتماعي

[Sam Poat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed

I enjoyed learning about him and I always like learning about England and it's Universities. He's funny and it was a joy to read.

[داليا روئيل]

مذكرات ذات طابع جريء .. يمكن الانتهاء منها في ساعات ....ممتعة جدا
جريء وصفه للمجتمع الرهباني