From the Publisher
"An oddly beautiful, or beautifully odd, book—a witty and rueful exercise in self-deprecation.. . . Not Entitled remarkably conveys the 'microclimate' of depression at the heart of a clever diffidence while being steadily entertaining, and even poetical." —John Updike, The New Yorker
"A triumph of tone... Kermode has written mainly of the gentle shocks and surprises that compose the part of a life that we choose. He has remembered safely and remembered well." —David Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review
John Updike
An oddly beautiful, or beautifully odd, book-a witty and rueful exercise in self-deprecation . . . Steadily entertaining, and even poetical.-- The New Yorker
David Bromwich
A triumph of tone . . . [Kermode has] remembered safely and remembered well. -- The New York Times Book Review
Michael Dirda
In every respect, this is what a memoir ought to be . . . This may be Frank Kermode's most quietly brilliant, as it is his most endearing, achievement. -- The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
In this enchanting, episodic memoir, Kermode chronicles the unusual course of events that carried him from a parochial childhood on the Isle of Man to international recognition as a literary critic. A modest, at times dolefully confessional raconteur, Kermode elides most details about his marriages and children, focusing instead upon his own perpetual feelings of dislocation and his lack of ``entitlement'' to cultural and familial attainments. Raised in a world of tenements, gaslights and ancient prejudices, the sensitive Kermode joined the navy at the outset of WWII, serving as clerk to a series of ``mad captains'' (including two Sisyphian years in Iceland building a naval defense that was never completed). Kermode next drifted into graduate school, later teaching at Reading, Bristol and University College of London, eventually becoming King Edward VII Professor of English at Cambridge, a post he resigned during a much-publicized controversy over post-structuralism during the early 1980s. Kermode also details the flap over his editorship of the cultural journal Encounter, which he left on principle in 1967 when it was revealed to be CIA-funded. And, through a marvelous prism of literary and cultural observations, Kermode, whose most famous book is The Sense of an Ending, affectingly ponders his own sense of mortality. (Nov.)
Library Journal
Kermode, scholar, critic, and teacher of English literature for nearly 50 years, has written a perceptive autobiography that is dry in wit, sharp in detail, but oddly distanced from its subject. The work is thematically divided into three parts: the first section covers Kermode's childhood and youth on the British Isle of Man, a unique but circumscribed world from which he escaped via scholarship to Liverpool University in 1938. After only a few terms, war intervened, and Kermode enlisted in the Royal Navy. The second part, his life with "my mad captains" and others, is by far the best of the book and should be required reading for those who consider war glamorous or heroic. Kermode's academic career, professional life, and thoughts on the intellectual wars over critical methods form a final third. Although the earlier chapters are of general interest, the last part requires more interest in, and knowledge of, politics and personalities in English academia than most American readers may possess. A quirky and beautifully written work; for specialized collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/95.]-Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale
Booknews
A graceful memoir by one of English literature's best-known literary critics providing an account of his life from childhood on the Isle of Man, U. K. to his service as lieutenant in the Royal Navy during WWII, his university years, and many years of teaching at universities throughout England and the US. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
