Tag Archives: Memoir

Scenes from newly published memoirs by Durs Grünbein (The Vocation of Poetry) and Les Murray (Killing the Black Dog). Durs Grünbein: “For me it all started with a noise—a not at all harmless noise—more of an acoustic irritation. The strange thing about it was its suddenness and the rift it left in my overall perception. [...]

Seeking relief from chronic and debilitating pains that conventional medicine could not cure, critic Tim Parks finds himself, much to his own surprise, attending a meditation retreat that involves sitting in crossed-legged silence for twelve and more hours a day. Although the retreat takes place in Italy, where Parks lives, the course leader, John Coleman, [...]

Exhausted by years of fruitless attempts to treat a battery of abdominal pains and urinary disorders with conventional medicine, Tim Parks tries a relaxation cure described in a book discovered on the net. He has the impression he is clutching at straws. Silence. More or less. How strange, I thought, after the fourth or fifth [...]

I know that had I been able to do what I liked, and that is just what I have not been able to do, I would have written nothing but novels. Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and given account of an experience and nail it down so that it [...]