Portraits
…there was no such things as a coherent human personality. When you are forty you have no cell in your body that you had at eighteen. It was the same, he said, with your character. Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.
Sebastian Faulks Charlotte Gray
The portraits on this page sketch some of the individuals and situations that have been most influential in my life. I also describe several essential aspects of my own life.
By a Running Brook is a portrait of my mother and the important role that literature played in her life.
A Life Cut Short provides a glimpse of the all too brief and all too unhappy life of my father.
He Had Two Lives sketches the two essential “acts” of my life and why each in turn has meant so much to me.
Verbal Frugality depicts one of the beguiling characteristics of the person I have lived most closely with throughout my adult life.
Twilight at the Cinema discusses the powerful impact of the cinema in my life and why I cherish the experience of seeing a fine film.
The Reader describes the way I have been changed by reading literature and how this experience has come to dominate the life I lead today.
The Teacher I was always astonished that someone would actually pay me for doing something that I enjoyed so much.
Fictional Friends I know some of my fictional friends far better that some of my real ones. In this essay I describe three of those I have met on the page.
