A Convergence of Literature, Memory, and Caregiving

I’m not sure I’d know who literary critic John Bayley was were he not the widower of Iris Murdoch. But since I’m currently reading The Bell, which Murdoch wrote around the time she married Bayley, I thought it would be informative to also read his take on their relationship.

I’d long ago started reading Bayley’s first memoir about his life with Murdoch, Elegy for Iris. I don’t think I finished it. In fact, I probably didn’t get far into it at all because, as I recall, I was disappointed that it was more about him than her.

Well, what was I thinking? It was HIS memoir, after all. And it would have been foolhardy to market the book without pushing the Murdoch connection.

Last month I thought I’d give him another try—especially in light of the fact that I felt I now had a tenuous connection to Bayley: caregiving. How did it affect him? Change him?

I was about 100 or so pages into Iris and Her Friends: A Memoir of Memory and Desire (note: the “friends” are not what you might expect)—each page turn requiring some cheerleading on my part to accomplish—when I decided to finish the book simply as an exercise in learning about someone/something I’m not really interested in. And then I reached this sentence on page 129:

“Most memoirs and autobiography have a ‘clever little me’ feel about them somewhere.”

I laughed because Bayley had admitted to one of the very reasons I was finding his memoirs tiresome. Yet by saying as much, he managed to break down the barrier between his story and his reader (me). He finally strikes me as genuine and straightforward, and I’ll likely enjoy the rest of his tale. I’m tempted to dust off Elegy for Iris next and give it another go.

I laughed also because I caught a slight reflection in that sentence of my own narrowmindedness and expectations of the book. The window into someone else’s history always casts new light onto our own lives and our understanding of the world. We just have to embrace what comes our way.

Mind wide open…

[Art: Tom Phillips’ portrait of Iris Murdoch for the National Portrait Gallery; cover for John Bayley’s recommended reading compilation, Hand Luggage: A Personal Anthology.]