MY LIFE IN WRITING: Memoirs of a Maverick

by J.C. Furnas ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 24, 1989

An engrossing memoir replete with the quirky minutiae that characterize Furnas' works of social history and biography (Stormy Weather: Crosslights on the Nineteen Thirties, 1977; Fanny Kemble, 1982, etc.). Nostalgia buffs will savor Furnas' grammar and high-school days in Indianapolis surrounded by ""Penrods"" and the disparate farms and agrarian techniques of various highly individualistic Indiana relatives. Although his father (a part owner and executive in a family-owned ice cream company) and clubwoman mother provided their ""bookworm"" son with much reading matter, he writes of them with veiled disdain. The veil comes off, however, when he discusses the stultifying educational methods of the Indianapolis school system. Caste-ridden Harvard also gets its lumps: it gave him ""lifelong academiphobia."" After the crash of '29 wiped out his job with a theatrical press agency, Furnas freelanced as a ghostwriter of various books and magazine columns and eventually as a contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, Collier's. etc. Much of the latter half of his book is devoted to people Furnas has known (from William Faulkner to a Fijian tribal chief), to ruminations on writers and writing, and to travel--Russia in the Thirties, the South Pacific during and after WW II, and much hithering and yonning on tramp steamers. Quixotically, the last book mentioned is his 1951 biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, Voyage to Windward; we never learn what impelled Furnas to write the voluminous historical tomes that consolidated his reputation. Crammed with prickly opinions and with vignettes about near and faraway places and memorable people: utterly captivating autobiography.

Pub Date: July 24, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION