Volume 33, Number 8 · May 8, 1986
The Good Life
By J.M. Cameron
Frank and Maisie: A Memoir with Parents
by Wilfrid Sheed
Simon and Schuster, 296 pp., $17.95
One can't easily write about the lives of one's parents without memorializing oneself, as for example Edmund Gosse does in Father and Son. Such a task is not at all like writing the life of a public figure, and this is true even if one or the other or both of the parents should be well known outside the family circle. Memory is one of the tools to be used, perhaps the principal one, and, given the savagery and tenderness—the sweet and sour—of life in most families, the bringing to the surface of memories that have lived deeply will certainly be disturbing and may even be painful. The story of one's relations with one's parents, and also with one's brothers and sisters, is a vehicle for making a reckoning of some kind, at least where the teller of the tale is middle-aged or old. It is also impossible to judge the mother and the father—John Stuart Mill got rid of half of this problem by never mentioning his mother at all—unless its being a fundamental act of impiety should give it a special relish; but self-judgment can't be avoided.
Review, 2070 words
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