Myself and Strangers : A Memoir of Apprenticeship

Rating:
Summary: Hemingway...plus
Review: Many times in the reading of Myself and Strangers I had the sense that this, finally, was the book Graves dreamed of writing as a young man, a book that was literate, exotic, sensual and profound. Not that Goodbye to a River isn't superior. But it is about a river in Texas, and the history of that remote place and its people. This concerns New York, and ex-pats, and ambition and self doubt, and romance, (and lust,) plowing the same European turf that Hemingway did, only (in my humble opinion) more compellingly. Myself and Strangers now resides on the list of the finest books, memoir or otherwise, that I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: An intimate delight from a master of detail
Review: This memoir covers the time the then-nascent writer John Graves spent in Europe - mostly Spain - following the Second World War and a failed first marriage. The book traces, through narrative and through journal entries from that time, Graves's effort to become a literary writer. It also chronicles the times, the people, deep friendships and poignant romances. And it provides us a decidedly UN-romantic look at the wealthy, hard-drinking American expatriate community - some entertaining moments come when the youngish and strictly reared Graves lets his journal know just what he thinks of all the bad behavior he's seeing (the older Graves appears more amused).

"Myself and Strangers" is a highly personal look back at youth by an author whose work has *always* been marked by the beauty of its language and the vividness of its images and portraits. The effect is heightened in this book because the subject matter is so intimate, even for a writer known for the immediacy and the personal nature of his prose. Here Graves lets us in on his early years of serious writing - writing that did not always go well, and that often caused more pain than pleasure for its creator. The old journal entries show Graves struggling with the "anxiety of influence" as he reads work by others. They also show him struggling with a sense of necessity and destiny that drove him forward even as he doubted his abilities.

This is an aspect of literary life that many writers don't reveal - either writing comes easily, or they don't talk about their difficulties with it (except jokingly) - and it is sometimes almost heartbreaking to read. But the heartbreak doesn't last - because if you know Graves's other books (and you should, particularly, in this reader's opinion, "Goodbye to a River" and "Hard Scrabble"), you know that not too long after the apprentice times he chronicles here, he had become the real thing. (For his entire career he has been known to other writers - though not always to the reading public beyond Texas. It's time for the rest of us to catch on!)

Graves is superb at bringing the reader into the moment, economically yet thoroughly. If sounds matter to a scene, they are almost audible. The stones on the ground and the clouds in the sky are almost visible. Even the smell and taste can be found if you need them. Thanks to this quality, you can read a page of "Myself and Strangers" and find yourself in the midst of a moment that happened 50 years ago. And whether you're out on a sailboat off Mallorca, or trying to figure out how to leave a shrill drunken party, or sitting on a terrace with a glass of wine on some warm luminous night, you are always spending time with a writer who's the best of good company.