532
PARTISAN
REVIEW
writers at all, have the advantage. Our most interesting American
and English journals are usually short essays or narratives on various
themes, composed with the care, craft and solemnity of any other
public performance;. too much of the free, flowing "I" is bad taste.
{On this question of the modesty we value so highly, I have heard
an extremely intelligent Englishmen say that E. M. Forster's relative
lack of productivity was due to his not wanting to "lord it over"
some of his old and dear friends by constantly and successfully ap–
pearing before the public as a novelist. Already, with Forster's repu–
tation, things were bad enough!) In the private journal, that
in–
scrutable scribbler, Boswell, again comes to mind. He cared terribly
about literature and was at great pains to polish his style, but
fortunately Boswell never got the idea. He wrote as an amateur,
giving off accounts of himself so vivid and outrageous one would
believe them written by an enemy, if it were not clear at every tum
that they are composed with adoration: Boswell's own matchless
enthusiasm for his adventures and thoughts. There are enough hints
to show how tedious Boswell would have been as a self-conscious
English man of letters, in good command of himself and his repu–
tation, thoughtful of the decencies, of pride, of moderation. In spite
of his efforts to achieve these qualities, Boswell hadn't the vaguest
notion what they were about. There is something nearly insane
in
his spontaneity. We are glad, even if his relations have a sort of
point.
The
hommage
and an individual's account of his own nature
and life are interesting, but they have hardly any of that sinful
appeal of those conversations, moments in the lives of famous or
infamous persons, taken down and arranged by another. The purpose
of the
hommage
is to praise, the usual practice of the diarist is to
look inward; but the memoir is concerned with the external, meant
to reveal, to pin down others. Unless one has met a number of famous
people or endured .an historic moment, he cannot in the fullest sense
even write his memoirs-"Memoirs of a Nobody," the title signifies
an irony. The art of presenting, analyzing, recording living persons
is, with us, protected and isolated by countless moral spears and
spikes. The very fact that one is in a position to observe for posterity
is all the more reason why he should decently refuse to do so. The
