eric_james's Full Review: John Bayley - Elegy for Iris: A Memoir
One day in 1994, my girlfriend and I were gallavanting around town, using public transportation, when--while sitting at a bus stop--she produced from her pack a thin book, and commenced to read. I queried her regarding the novel in her hands, and discovered that it was a novel written by a woman, someone unknown to me at the time, Iris Murdoch. The novel, her first, titled, Under the Net.
She handed me the book and I read a few lines, then coveted it, but she would not relinquish it; therefore, I went to the library and checked out another of Murdoch's novels, A Fairly Honorable Defeat (see my review at http://meaning.epinions.com/book-review-3196-6AC167F-39B6C50C-prod1 ). Within six months, I read it again, and consumed several other Murdoch novels, including The Sea, The Sea, Nuns and Soldiers, The Black Prince, The Philosopher's Pupil, as well as her non-fiction masterpiece, Metaphysics as A Guide to Morals, and others. I became a true fan.
As a fan, therefore, it grieved me to learn of her death in 1999. I knew that she had Alzheimers, and that we'd likely have no new novels, yet I also felt the loss of a brilliant mind, and a great contemporary writer.
When later that year her husband, John Bayley, published Elegy for Iris, I purchased it instantly. This is truly a beautiful book, managing to contain within it a brief biolgraphical portrait of one of my favorite writers, as well as an eloquent, heart-felt distillment of Bayley's continuous love for his life-partner and spouse.
Elegy for Iris is divided into two parts: Then, wherein Bayley explores the past, provocatively revealing his memory of meeting and falling in love with Iris; and Now, which touches upon the way she has changed due to Alzheimer's, and what it is like to live with her and take care of her amid his memories of the past.
Bayley writes of his initial meeting with Iris: "Like so much to do with our emotions, the egoism of love has something absurd about it, though something touching as well. It was certainly absurd that I should have taken for granted in those days that Iris was pure spirit, so to speak, devoted to philosophy and to her job, leading a nunlike existence in her little room in college, devoid of all the dissimulations and wonderings and plottings and plannings that I took for granted in myself. She was a superior being, and I knew that superior beings just did not have the kind of mind that I had."
This is an endlessly romantic and moving novel, colored with Bayley's obvious love and sense of loss, but rich with his implicit good heart. A scholar himself, the writing flows like poetry, and often brings one to tears. We meet Iris with him, fall in love with her with him, as he courageously reveals his most inward thoughts and feelings, moving through the patterns of human love and desire that most of us have experienced i our own lifetimes.
Elegy to Iris is a stunning portrait of a great writer, a work of art, conveying ardently the poetry of a literary life, possessing its own implicit beauty and power.
A melodious, hugely affecting tribute to the late Dame Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest writers of her time, written by her devoted husband of 42 yea...More at Alibris
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