Writing One's Memoirs By The Best of Anarchist Principles

[RonPrice]

Anyone who has actually read the first two volumes(1800 pages) of my memoirs deserves a prize for having come this far. If it is any comfort, you persistent few have got through more than half of the conceptual space where identity and meaning meet around three themes: my life, my society and my religion. If you have read this far, I’m confident that you have gained some pleasure in the read and I am happy for you. Indeed, my very raison d’etre for this autobiography can be found in the pleasure and the understandings you have found thusfar. De te fabula narratur -this is your story--at least in part and an important part, or so I like to think. I like to think that those entering into the world of their memoirs or autobiography can see here some images of that literary future. The images I have offered, though, were not planned in a sequence, a tidy narrative line from cradle to grave, so to speak; but on the best of anarchist principles—that is with no planning, somewhat like the way Michael Ondaatje writes his novels-with no sense of what is going to happen next. It just growed!

I’m not sure how much of a psychological necessity it was for me to seek relief by setting down this story. This work was no opiate, as Alexander Herzon’s autobiography was to him, “against the appalling loneliness of a life lived among uninterested strangers.” I was far from lonely and was surrounded by students and Baha’is who were far from “uninterested strangers.” Like this greatest of Russian autobiographers, though, much time was needed for the events in my life to settle into “a perspicuous thought,” a thought I could convey in both a meaningful and written form. Like Herzen, too, some of my thoughts were uncomfortable and melancholy, but in writing I was able to reconcile them, after several unsatisfactory attempts, with my rational faculty. Art--and for me the art of writing--is an outward integration inspired by a degree of inner disintegration.

It is more than a little coincidental that my first published articles in the press and my first collected poems in my own files and occasionally in magazines came in the first years after lithium had stabilized by bipolar life; and an even greater literary enthusiasm and success came when luvox, sodium valproate and venlafaxine were in my bloodstream.

It was said of the writer James Joyce that he attempted in Ulysses to render as exhaustively, as precisely and as directly as it was possible in words to do, what his participation in life was like or, rather, what it seemed to him to be like from moment to moment as he lived. This was Joyce’s way of narrowing the gap, as he saw it, between life and literature. This narrative of mine does not attempt a moment by moment, blow by blow account.....enough for now.-Ron

[RonPrice]

After 65 years of having hair at least partly curly, I am not interested in hair-straighteners of any kind. Thanking you.-Ron Price, Australia

[RonPrice]

More on my memoirs after one year here at: Anarchist Discussion Forums....Ron Price, Tasmania
------------------------------------
Having completed my autobiography or, at least, completed a sixth edition in a form that is satisfactory to me over five volumes; and keeping in mind that I will in all likelihood make additions to it in the years ahead, in my middle years(65-75) of late adulthood as some human development theorists call the years from 60 to 80 in the lifespan, I want to write a sort of addendum or epilogue in the pages which follow. I often devote more than one draft to the creation of most of my literary productions. In books of this length I can not count the number of drafts.

Characteristically in much of my writing, in the essay, poem or journal item I write a first draft and then subject that draft to a quasi-rigorous redrafting or revision at what might be called the proof stage, before publication if, indeed, there was to be a publication. But this is not the case with my autobiography which I have been working on now for more than 25 years, 1984 to 2010. In the last seven years, 2003 to 2010, I have had trouble leaving the manuscript alone. Perspiration and inspiration combined in happy measure to produce this final product, at least final as of the middle of my 66th year on 23 January 2010.

Perhaps in my further years of late adulthood, like Frank and Malachy McCourt, transplanted Irishmen who have turned their autobiographies into an evening of cabaret comedy, I can interweave stories, songs, and broad character monologues and appear at some of the best entertainment places. It takes a good yarn-spinner, someone who can resuscitate stereotypes with gusto, has a sharp eye for detail and, in Australia, can make people laugh. I won’t hold my breath waiting for this development in my own life and style of writing. I won’t hold my breath, either, waiting for the complete removal from my text of the kind of political language that concerned George Orwell; namely, euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. I am sure I am guilty of keeping phrases in my text that, as Orwell puts it, anaesthetize a portion of one's brain. To those who have actually read goodly portions of this book, I apologize for creating any difficulties which could have been avoided by greater efforts at simplicity, clarity and concision.

My general approach in writing has been like that of the professional journalist, but in the case of my books I add, subtract, alter, redraft, revise, many times. Like Wordsworth and most people who write these days, though, I have never seen myself as a writer who made a living by his pen. Like Wordsworth, as is the case with most poets, the process of writing is as important as the product. Although I often draw on other writers and thinkers, unlike Wordsworth I never feel I am pitting myself against the ghost of a previous writer or writers, as Wordsworth had Milton before his mind when he wrote. I have not felt the need to know what the plan of my work, my essay or poem was to be. Like Michael Ondaatje I planned as I wrote, did not preplan the entire text.

This epilogue will be followed by seven appendices, appendices on various subjects pertinent to this autobiography. The work will conclude with a final chapter. This concluding chapter will not be included in this volume until my passing, although I will add the first two pages as a sort of teaser for those who have followed the account thusfar.....enough....enough for now and for this site in 2010.-Ron

[RonPrice9]

The following prose-poem is an example of one aspect of my memoir-writing using the best of anarchist principles.-Ron
-------------------------------
THE STORY OF MANKIND

The film The Story of Mankind was released in the USA on 8 November 1957. Four days before, on 4 November 1957, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, Shoghi Effendi, passed away in London. I was only 13 years old and in grade 8 in Burlington Ontario at the time. Shoghi Effendi was on the periphery of my life immersed as I was in 1957 in sport, study, a school environment and life in a small town in Canada. The leading actor in this film was Ronald Colman(1891-1958) who represented ‘the spirit of mankind’ in the film. My mother liked this actor so much she named me Ronald after him. In the film a council of elders from outer space is deliberating on a very important subject: Must mankind be allowed to survive? Is mankind so essentially evil that it must be destroyed? A devil and an angel act as prosecutor of and defence for the human race. The movie presents in a very interesting way a series of episodes to portray human history. The film presents the story of men and their women from the beginning of creation! What will be the final verdict? Innocent or guilty? Mankind survives as the plot in the film goes, but we are put on alert. The 1950s was a time when humankind was first experiencing what it was like to stand at the edge of oblivion due to the atomic bomb. I grew up in the shadow of the bomb and I have often wondered what effect it had on my development as a youth. -Ron Price with thanks to IMDb, an internet movie database, 10 September 2010.

Colman, a British actor, had a long and varied Hollywood career and was known for his mellifluous, bewitching, finely-modulated, resonant voice. He started out early in silent films becoming stereotyped as a great lover. I think my somewhat romantic mother fell in love with Colman, although I shall never know; she passed away over 30 years ago. In the early days of sound, Colman’s voice helped him to easily make the transition that other stars were unable to make. Colman’s output lessened in the early 1940's but he was not ready to be relegated to has-been status by any means. Random Harvest in 1942 brought a second Best Actor nomination and in 1948 he actually won the Oscar for A Double Life

Colman got several Academy Award nominations. He is perhaps best known for his role in the still-unsurpassed romantic adventure Lost Horizon. This film came out in 1937 nine weeks before the start of the first Baha’i teaching Plan: 1937-1944. I have been associated with the extensions of this Plan in the last 70 years. It is a Plan with a visionary and a utopian narrative with some similarities to Lost Horizon.--Ron Price with thanks to the internet blog “You’re Only As Good As Your Last Picture,” 10 September 2010.

I hardly knew you back then, Ronald,
although I remember the Lost Horizon
film: it left a strong mark on my life, so
much more than most movies. Its vision
of a perfect society appealed to my very
idealistic young spirit which had just then
entered its teenage life at the time of the
first Earth-orbiting satellite……Sputnik;
growing up back then among religion’s
complacent trinity: Catholic, Protestant
and Jew and with Indians getting licked
by the cavalry at movies on the Saturday
matinees’ popcorn and candy-wrappers.

Ron Price
10 September 2010

[RonPrice]

Back in March 2009 I wrote the following in this thread: "After 65 years of having hair at least partly curly, I am not interested in hair-straighteners of any kind. Thanking you." I wrote these words because some dude asked me if I wanted to buy a hair-straightener. When one posts on the internet one has to cope with all sorts of folks who post inappropriate stuff that moderators have to delete. That post was deleted and, for that, I thank the moderator.-Ron Price, Tasmania, Australia