The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2255  Friday, 28 November 2003

From:           Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 27 Nov 2003 20:30:05 -0000
Subject: 14.2244 Memoirs
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2244 Memoirs

>For a class of bright eighth graders, I need a list of short memoirs.
>George Orwell's essays on his life at Eton, shooting an elephant,
>looking back on the Spanish civil war, etc., come to mind.  Also
>Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," and other autobiographical material.
>The catch is that they have to be good for reading aloud, must take no
>more than thirty-five minutes to read aloud, and not be on subjects that
>the children would not understand or be too interested in.
>
>Michael B. Luskin

It's an ... odd ... text, but there's _The God That Failed _, edited by
Richard Crossman (originally published in 1950, but currently in
reprint).

It's a pretty classic Cold War anticommunist text, a set of memoirs by
ex-communists as to "Why I rejected communism", and so might provide a
link with Orwell.

My memories are that the collection is acutely embarrassing, the worst
example of pusillanimity being Stephen Spender's piece, but Silone and
Koestler come out with some credit.  Both of those pieces are powerful,
and about, I'd guess, the right reading length.

Robin Hamilton

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