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Book of Life: A Compendium of the Best Autobiographical and Memoir Writing
From childhood through to adulthood - if not necessarily maturity - "The Book of Life" offers the literary journal of a lifetime, in the company of the most fascinating and talented figures in history. From Alan Bennett's wartime childhood in Yorkshire to Mahatma Gandhi's experiment with cigarettes; Katherine Hepburn on her first acting job aged 21 and Primo Levi on being captured by Fascist militia at the same age; Darwin on his lifelong love - his work - and Nelson Mandela on his release from prison aged 71 ...life and living in all its manifold glories is represented. With insights that encompass generations and continents, this is a uniquely enjoyable immersion in some of the world's best, and most personal, writing.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
496 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2005
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Eve Claxton
11 books4 followersI was born in London and moved to New York in 1995. After working as a freelance magazine writer — for Vogue U.S. and U.K., The Tatler, The Guardian and Time Out New York — I embarked on a career in nonfiction books. Since then, I've co-written or ghost-written seven books for major publishers on a range of subjects with an emphasis on memoirs, forgotten histories and women's lives. I regularly craft book proposals for authors.
My career in radio has involved producing pieces for the StoryCorps broadcast on NPR and for the organization's major funders (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation). My radio work has also been featured on BBC Radio 4. I give talks and lead workshops on storytelling and I contribute articles about the arts and fashion to Porter magazine.
In everything I do, I love to collaborate and to help people to tell their stories and tell them well.
My career in radio has involved producing pieces for the StoryCorps broadcast on NPR and for the organization's major funders (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation). My radio work has also been featured on BBC Radio 4. I give talks and lead workshops on storytelling and I contribute articles about the arts and fashion to Porter magazine.
In everything I do, I love to collaborate and to help people to tell their stories and tell them well.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2018
A collection of autobiographical excerpts, starting with snapshots of youth and ending with the gnarled wisdoms of old age. With a pretentious title comes a fairly personal collection of choices (including plenty of repeated entries from the same authors, not always to great effect), but also an academic range, starting as far back as St Augustine. Despite the drier entries, she has managed to dig up some gold dust, and it's worth plowing through the duller sections to get to it. (I've stuck a few smaller excerpts below, but there are some wonderful larger sections which get several pages lavished on them, worth diving into to get the full scope of the historical trappings, or the personal revelations, involved).
3.5-
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Excerpts:
---
I would be twenty before I learned how to be fifteen, thirty before I knew what it meant to be twenty, and now at seventy-two I have to stop myself from thinking like a man of fifty who has plenty of time ahead.
~ Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life, 1987
---
Another time we had to record the sound of someone being hit in the head. We tried socking all kinds of things, but the mixer didn't find anything that was suitable. Finally I exploded and hit the microphone with my fist. The blue light signalling 'OK' flashed on.
~ Akira Kurosawa, Something Like An Autobiography, 1982
---
I have no design for living, no philosophy - whether sage or fool, we must all struggle with life. I vacillate with inconsistencies; at times small things will annoy me and catastrophes will leave me indifferent.
~Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, 1964
---
The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated...
...What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains...
...[Dreams and visions] form the prima materia of my scientific work. They were the fiery magma out of which the stone that had to be worked was crystallized.
~ CG Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961
---
In my dream I was eighty years old; ten years older than I am at the time of writing. I was in Hollywood to play a very small part, for which I was being paid handsomely, in a movie directed by David Lean. If I was eighty he must have been getting on for eighty-seven, but he was lithe and handsome as ever. He appeared to be riding on some giant camera which resembled a combine-harvester. On this strange apparatus were various seats, canvas chairs, slings and steel bars on which were perched a dozen assistant directors I have known in the past, together with camera crews, continuity girls, producers and press representatives. I was heavily made up, with a very black beard, curly black wig, and dressed as some sort of tramp. My part consisted of a few lines, mostly gibberish, and required me to be killed in a train crash. The huge camera was facing a railway truck tilted on its side, about fifteen feet up in the air, and David, wearing his smart blue collarless jacket, had his eyes glued to a lens. 'When he arrives,' he said, 'put him in the truck but don't let it fall until we do a take.' 'I suppose we are properly insured,' said a producer I didn't recognise, 'should anything happen.' 'For God's sake,' piped up someone else, 'he's eighty, so what's it matter?' Maggie Unsworth, a delightful continuity girl who always smoothed over awkward situations with great tact, whispered to David, 'Alec is here.' David unfocussed his eye from the lens and refocussed on me. 'Where have you been?' he asked irritably. 'Crossing the Atlantic and the United States. I got in two hours ago. As you see, I am made up. But I don't appear to have a dressing-room. I changed in a passage.' All the assistant directors jumped off the camera. 'No dressing-room?' they chorused. 'The last time I was at MGM Studios' I said over-modestly, 'I was given Spencer Tracy's room. Of course I wouldn't expect anything like that now: that was forty years ago and I was starring with Grace Kelly.' 'Oh, we know, we know!' David said. It struck me that no one else knew: the press representatives were feeling for their notebooks. 'Well, climb in the truck,' David said, 'and we'll have a go. When you've said your speech - blah, blah, blah - the camera eases in and the truck falls over. End of you.' 'How do I get in?' I asked. The assistants ran in circles, David thumped his head with his fists and everyone left the set to have coffee. 'I think I'll go home now,' I said to no one in particular. At that moment the truck fell over, doing a lot of damage. Looking at the wreckage I realized that had I been in the truck I would have been crushed to death. 'What a f*cking way to die!' I said. Then I saw my doppleganger, spread-eagled on the railway-line, its head separated from its body. 'Is the make-up okay?' the head asked. 'The beard is too black,' I replied to the head. I turned to look for David, to ask his opinion, but by now they were all making another film, in a different location, and were no longer concerned with me. I woke, shielding my eyes from the arc-lamp of the moon.
~ Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise, 1985
3.5-
---
Excerpts:
---
I would be twenty before I learned how to be fifteen, thirty before I knew what it meant to be twenty, and now at seventy-two I have to stop myself from thinking like a man of fifty who has plenty of time ahead.
~ Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life, 1987
---
Another time we had to record the sound of someone being hit in the head. We tried socking all kinds of things, but the mixer didn't find anything that was suitable. Finally I exploded and hit the microphone with my fist. The blue light signalling 'OK' flashed on.
~ Akira Kurosawa, Something Like An Autobiography, 1982
---
I have no design for living, no philosophy - whether sage or fool, we must all struggle with life. I vacillate with inconsistencies; at times small things will annoy me and catastrophes will leave me indifferent.
~Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, 1964
---
The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated...
...What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains...
...[Dreams and visions] form the prima materia of my scientific work. They were the fiery magma out of which the stone that had to be worked was crystallized.
~ CG Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961
---
In my dream I was eighty years old; ten years older than I am at the time of writing. I was in Hollywood to play a very small part, for which I was being paid handsomely, in a movie directed by David Lean. If I was eighty he must have been getting on for eighty-seven, but he was lithe and handsome as ever. He appeared to be riding on some giant camera which resembled a combine-harvester. On this strange apparatus were various seats, canvas chairs, slings and steel bars on which were perched a dozen assistant directors I have known in the past, together with camera crews, continuity girls, producers and press representatives. I was heavily made up, with a very black beard, curly black wig, and dressed as some sort of tramp. My part consisted of a few lines, mostly gibberish, and required me to be killed in a train crash. The huge camera was facing a railway truck tilted on its side, about fifteen feet up in the air, and David, wearing his smart blue collarless jacket, had his eyes glued to a lens. 'When he arrives,' he said, 'put him in the truck but don't let it fall until we do a take.' 'I suppose we are properly insured,' said a producer I didn't recognise, 'should anything happen.' 'For God's sake,' piped up someone else, 'he's eighty, so what's it matter?' Maggie Unsworth, a delightful continuity girl who always smoothed over awkward situations with great tact, whispered to David, 'Alec is here.' David unfocussed his eye from the lens and refocussed on me. 'Where have you been?' he asked irritably. 'Crossing the Atlantic and the United States. I got in two hours ago. As you see, I am made up. But I don't appear to have a dressing-room. I changed in a passage.' All the assistant directors jumped off the camera. 'No dressing-room?' they chorused. 'The last time I was at MGM Studios' I said over-modestly, 'I was given Spencer Tracy's room. Of course I wouldn't expect anything like that now: that was forty years ago and I was starring with Grace Kelly.' 'Oh, we know, we know!' David said. It struck me that no one else knew: the press representatives were feeling for their notebooks. 'Well, climb in the truck,' David said, 'and we'll have a go. When you've said your speech - blah, blah, blah - the camera eases in and the truck falls over. End of you.' 'How do I get in?' I asked. The assistants ran in circles, David thumped his head with his fists and everyone left the set to have coffee. 'I think I'll go home now,' I said to no one in particular. At that moment the truck fell over, doing a lot of damage. Looking at the wreckage I realized that had I been in the truck I would have been crushed to death. 'What a f*cking way to die!' I said. Then I saw my doppleganger, spread-eagled on the railway-line, its head separated from its body. 'Is the make-up okay?' the head asked. 'The beard is too black,' I replied to the head. I turned to look for David, to ask his opinion, but by now they were all making another film, in a different location, and were no longer concerned with me. I woke, shielding my eyes from the arc-lamp of the moon.
~ Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise, 1985
October 6, 2008
My Book of Life
Self
Know thyself, Accept thyself, Be thyself
Family
Disce pati (Learn to suffer)
Vincere vel mori (Victory or death, conquer or die)
Schooling
Play the game
Effort + Perseverance = Success
Per ardua ad astra (Through adversity to the stars)
Education
Sapere aude (Dare to be wise)
Let Wisdom Guide
Gratia et veritas (Grace and Truth)
Ex veritate salus (Out of truth (or understanding) comes health (or wellbeing))
Work
Troudeau's maxim
Gerir quelquefois, salager sauvant, consoler tojours ~
Cure sometimes, Relieve often, Comfort always
John Donne's view of Life:
Every man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind
The New Testament view of Life
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you have them do unto you
The Intercultural Communication view of Life:
The Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would have do unto themselves
Douglas Adam’s view of Life:
The answer to the ultimate question
on the meaning of life, the universe and everything, is, . . 42
Love
?
?
?
?
?
?
Self
Know thyself, Accept thyself, Be thyself
Family
Disce pati (Learn to suffer)
Vincere vel mori (Victory or death, conquer or die)
Schooling
Play the game
Effort + Perseverance = Success
Per ardua ad astra (Through adversity to the stars)
Education
Sapere aude (Dare to be wise)
Let Wisdom Guide
Gratia et veritas (Grace and Truth)
Ex veritate salus (Out of truth (or understanding) comes health (or wellbeing))
Work
Troudeau's maxim
Gerir quelquefois, salager sauvant, consoler tojours ~
Cure sometimes, Relieve often, Comfort always
John Donne's view of Life:
Every man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind
The New Testament view of Life
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you have them do unto you
The Intercultural Communication view of Life:
The Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would have do unto themselves
Douglas Adam’s view of Life:
The answer to the ultimate question
on the meaning of life, the universe and everything, is, . . 42
Love
?
?
?
?
?
?
August 9, 2013
Very good book shows that all through the ages we all have the same worries and life experiences
September 11, 2016
An excellent anthology for the bedside table. Autobiographical and memoir writing at its best.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews