'There Is Still So Much I Do Not Know'

I have encountered the neologism “egowriting” used to describe -- with approval -- such genres as memoirs, diaries, journals, letters, blog posts, commonplace books, notebooks and essays--almost anything. In other words, a broad collection of forms in which the author and his self are often the focus. It’s a cloyingly repellant name and a complicated literary category that might even be stretched to include some forms of fiction and poetry. 

I have an ambiguous relationship with the first-person singular. When I started Anecdotal Evidence nineteen years ago, I intended it to be more like literary criticism but soon discovered I’m not a critic nor does most criticism interest me. Thus, the motto: “A blog about the intersection of books and life.” My model more closely resembled the classic English essay, à la Hazlitt, Lamb and Beerbohm, a mingling of the bookish and the familiar. Books are life for a dedicated reader, or at least a big chunk of it, not a segregated category. I have no interest in John Berryman-like confession, the minutia of self-display. Often, I still feel a tingle of uncertainty when I deploy an “I,” and sometimes while revising prune them away.    

 

Lately, I have come to look forward to the essays of Peter Hitchens in The Lamp magazine. He does what I strive to do. His latest is “All Shall Wax Old,” subtitled “On the Past.” He begins with a Chestertonian premise: sorting old clothes. He recalls an anecdote from his schoolboy days and then the task of sorting his father’s possessions after his death:

 

“There is still so much I do not know, which is why I urge everyone to get to know their parents while they can, and to ask, without restraint, about their lives. As it is, I came out of a mystery, and in this life I will never solve it.”

 

One memory unfolds into another. None is lingered over self-regardingly. He reflects on his relationships with his own children. Hitchens’ touch is serious but light. There’s no self-flagellation or self-aggrandizement, no wallowing in guilt or self-congratulation:

 

“How do you recover when you have failed to set a good example, or set a bad one? How much attention was I paying during those crucial times? Who wants power over others? Not I. The only power worth having in the world is the power to stop those others from interfering too much in your life.”

 

Hear, hear. In the U.S., the most important of rights is not included in our precious Bill of Rights. It is, of course, the right to be left alone, not to be controlled or manipulated. Hitchens cites a novel by Michael Frayn I have not read and concludes his essay – which began with sorting old clothes – like this: “Heavens, how sad it is to contemplate all those days of mighty trivia. If I think about it too much, I can hardly breathe.”

 

Starting with the mundane, Hitchens finishes gracefully with the profound.