- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; New Ed edition (17 Mar 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006863299
- ISBN-13: 978-0006863298
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 764,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
Kermode was born and brought up on the Isle of Man. He became one of Britain's most famous literary critics, but in this biography he chooses to focus on the scenes, values and legacies of his public and private life.
From the Back Cover
“Kermode's memoir, 'Not Entitled', is an oddly beautiful, or a beautifully odd book… it is as an inadequate son, faulty pupil, indifferent Navy man, bad interviewee, and dupe of more worldly others that he principally figures in his own accounts… The uneasy sensation of a fundamental exclusion… has haunted him but surely this sensation is a common human one? No amount of positive accomplishment and social cheer can cancel it, and it is Kermode's significant accomplishment, in the insouciance of old age, to have given it so delicate and circumstantial an expression.”
JOHN UPDIKE, 'New Yorker'
“What makes 'Not Entitled' so magical is its combination of painful honesty with exquisite prose and crystalline wit… What emerges is an insider who always felt an outsider; a famous scholar who was yet too solitary to make marriage work… His genius is to offer such to make marriage work… His genius is to offer such characteristics as personal failings while conveying them in terms which make us see that they are common human ones – that they belong to ourselves.”
JACK WULLSCHLAGER, 'Financial Times'
“In my opinion, and that of many others, Frank Kermode is the finest English critic of his generation… His memoir has all the virtues of his criticism – lucidity, wit, intelligence, economy, with an additional dimension of personal introspection. He speaks, with characteristic shrewdness, of 'the good writing that cannot help eliminating truth from autobiography', citing Nabokov as an example. But he seems to me to have come as near as possible to closing that circle. 'Not Entitled' is both convincingly honest and an unqualified pleasure to read. I only wish it were longer.”
DAVID LODGE, 'New York Review of Books'
“The writing is wonderful throughout: oblique, stealthy, lucid, finely tuned to every little ripple of multiple meaning… Kermode is a writer and a very good one.”
MICHAEL WOOD, 'London Review of Books'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I dimly remember Frank Kermode as the editor of the handy Fontana Modern Masters series in the seventies, and came across him more recently as the subject of an essay by Clive James in his Meaning of Recognition collection. When Kermode died last year at the age of ninety, his obituaries described him as "the leading literary critic of his generation" and outlined his glittering career, which included spells as (deep breath) the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge - an academic appointment so exalted that it's made by the Crown - and the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. They also described this little autobiography (first published in 1995) as a fine example of his elegant and lucid prose style.
Well, it's certainly well-written, but the man it describes seems - surprisingly - to be a long way from the one who's apparently enjoyed so much success in his chosen field. His theme here echoes his title: a awkward sense of being outside, of an insecurity that's bred from a feeling of inadequacy. He spells this out explicitly in an aside to the reader on p242: "Wherever you go you find the world divided into clubs. [...] You know you can never be a member, though the privileges are sometimes offered on a temporary basis". Perhaps such a bleak world view had its roots in his childhood in a poor family on the Isle of Man, or in his wartime experiences on a frigate, labouring alongside a selection of crew members and officers whose characters and actions ranged from eccentric to lunatic.
Both these periods in his life are described in unflinching detail, but - whilst he drily records some hilarious episodes in the Navy - I found I was more comfortable with his third (and final) chapter, where he discusses his academic career. Some specific incidents are presented at length - notably his resignation from his position as co-editor of the Encounter literary magazine when he realized it was being funded by the CIA, and his role in the Cambridge structuralism debate, which was written up (inaccurately, he says) in the popular press at the time. In keeping with his theme he writes very modestly about his work and activities, taking care always to point out his own shortcomings, which provides a thought-provoking alternative view of a life so distinguished as regards the glories of the world.
Well, it's certainly well-written, but the man it describes seems - surprisingly - to be a long way from the one who's apparently enjoyed so much success in his chosen field. His theme here echoes his title: a awkward sense of being outside, of an insecurity that's bred from a feeling of inadequacy. He spells this out explicitly in an aside to the reader on p242: "Wherever you go you find the world divided into clubs. [...] You know you can never be a member, though the privileges are sometimes offered on a temporary basis". Perhaps such a bleak world view had its roots in his childhood in a poor family on the Isle of Man, or in his wartime experiences on a frigate, labouring alongside a selection of crew members and officers whose characters and actions ranged from eccentric to lunatic.
Both these periods in his life are described in unflinching detail, but - whilst he drily records some hilarious episodes in the Navy - I found I was more comfortable with his third (and final) chapter, where he discusses his academic career. Some specific incidents are presented at length - notably his resignation from his position as co-editor of the Encounter literary magazine when he realized it was being funded by the CIA, and his role in the Cambridge structuralism debate, which was written up (inaccurately, he says) in the popular press at the time. In keeping with his theme he writes very modestly about his work and activities, taking care always to point out his own shortcomings, which provides a thought-provoking alternative view of a life so distinguished as regards the glories of the world.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
A short, pithy and hilarious review of critic's life
15 Aug 1996
Format:Hardcover
Kermode, who introduced the English-speaking world to French post-structuralist theory when he was teaching at the University of London, is far less interested in such effete and rarified (not to say, obtuse!) things than in relating his childhood, youth and early adulthood to the later course his life took. Born on the linguistically isolated island of Mann, his recollections of those early years suggested nothing of the extraordinary literary-critical future that awaited him. His service in the Royal Navy puts to rest the common conviction that anyone who served in that war must be a hero. On the contrary, he considered the whole outing a total waste of time (something that anyone who's served in the military will recogize as fundamentally correct!). A narrow measure of his prodigious critical output may be found in another AMAZON offering of Kermode's: _The Uses of Error_
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Modest Man
30 Sep 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was not acquainted with the writing of Frank Kermode but read his obituary in the "Times" Magazine. After learning he had been born on the Isle of Man, yet held a foremost role as a major art critic and writer, I sent for his autobiography.
Because Mr. Kermondy was born on a small, isolated island, I assumed his sense of community would be developed, but his is an odder story than that. He never says so, but his mother was most likely illegitimate, and, so, he never found out any family background on her side of the family. It was "off limits" to ask, and he grew up with only his parents, his father being from Scotland. It is as if Kermody were isolated on an already isolated island. The voice of the book is lonely, but not self-pitying: ironic.
The author's adventures during the Second World War in the British Navy are down-to-earth and unsentimental. The title for the book: "Unentitled" comes from his seaman's experience. When a man went to the bursur's to be paid, he would lay his cap down. If he had received enough demerits that pay period, the bursur would call out, "Unentitled!" meaning the man had no salary at all. All the poor fellow could do, according to the author, was to salute smartly, pivot and leave, or he might just get another demerit.
I felt the author was disillusioned, but he does not easily give out his secrets, but delves into the lives of others. He has a certain impenetrable qualilty, which is not in evidence in his other books.
Because Mr. Kermondy was born on a small, isolated island, I assumed his sense of community would be developed, but his is an odder story than that. He never says so, but his mother was most likely illegitimate, and, so, he never found out any family background on her side of the family. It was "off limits" to ask, and he grew up with only his parents, his father being from Scotland. It is as if Kermody were isolated on an already isolated island. The voice of the book is lonely, but not self-pitying: ironic.
The author's adventures during the Second World War in the British Navy are down-to-earth and unsentimental. The title for the book: "Unentitled" comes from his seaman's experience. When a man went to the bursur's to be paid, he would lay his cap down. If he had received enough demerits that pay period, the bursur would call out, "Unentitled!" meaning the man had no salary at all. All the poor fellow could do, according to the author, was to salute smartly, pivot and leave, or he might just get another demerit.
I felt the author was disillusioned, but he does not easily give out his secrets, but delves into the lives of others. He has a certain impenetrable qualilty, which is not in evidence in his other books.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant Memoir of an Honest Man(x)
6 Mar 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Kermode is one of the rare scholar-critics of our time whose analytical brilliance has not obscured from him his own humanity. This memoir, along with--or perhaps heading the list of--his distinguished titles, The Sense of an Ending, The Genesis of Secrecy, Shakespeare's Language, and many more, guarantees his place in the canon of classics chosen by those who read for pleasure.
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