My Father and Myself (New York Review of Books Classics Series)

by J. R. Ackerley, W. H. Auden (Introduction)

Overview

This heartfelt gay memoir about an adult son uncovering his father’s secrets is “a cross between Dickens’s David Copperfield, Rousseau’s Confessions, and the new pornography” (Donald Windham).
 
When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own—this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self—making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590175262
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/31/2012
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) was for many years the literary editor of the BBC magazine The Listener. His works include three memoirs, Hindoo Holiday, My Dog Tulip, and My Father and Myself, and a novel, We Think the World of You (all available as New York Review Books).

W.H. Auden (1907–1973) was born in North Yorkshire, England, the son of a doctor. He studied at Oxford and published his first book, Poems, in 1930, immediately establishing himself as one of the outstanding voices of his generation. Auden emigrated to New York in 1939, where he became a US citizen and converted to Anglicanism. He wrote essays, critical studies, plays, and opera librettos for such composers as Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, and Hans Werner Henze, as well as the poems for which he is most famous.

What People are Saying About This

Emma Tennant

Emma Tennant, British Vogue

It makes today's memoirs look pallid.

Donald Windham

J.R. Ackerley's humor is unique; his truth is stranger - and funnier - than fiction. My Father and Myself is a cross between Dickens' David Copperfield, Rousseau's Confessions, and The New Pornagraphy. Donald Windham

Editorial Reviews

It is not hard to see why the books of J.R. Ackerley should now seem worth reprinting...In every respect we are at the ideal historical distance to view him as both within and ahead of his time.
—Times Literary Supplement

John Stokes