{"id":39329,"date":"2019-08-20T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T05:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39329"},"modified":"2019-08-19T08:34:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T12:34:13","slug":"qotd-autobiography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/08\/20\/qotd-autobiography\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Autobiography"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><div id=\"attachment_25548\" style=\"width: 372px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25548\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"362\" height=\"503\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25548\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg 362w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/George_Orwell_press_photo-107x150.jpg 107w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 362px) 100vw, 362px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-25548\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Orwell&#8217;s press card portrait, 1943<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. However, even the most flagrantly dishonest book (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frank_Harris\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Frank Harris<\/a>&#8216;s autobiographical writings are an example) can without intending it give a true picture of its author. Dali&#8217;s recently published [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Secret_Life_of_Salvador_Dal%C3%AD\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Secret Life of Salvador Dali<\/em><\/a>] comes under this heading. Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticised, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent <em>ordinariness<\/em> of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.<\/p>\n<p>George Orwell, <a href=\"http:\/\/orwell.ru\/library\/reviews\/dali\/english\/e_dali\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali&#8221;, <em>Saturday Book for 1944<\/em><\/a>, 1944.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. However, even the most flagrantly dishonest book (Frank Harris&#8216;s autobiographical writings are an example) can without intending it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,62,7,41],"tags":[102,1077,86,354],"class_list":["post-39329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-europe","category-history","category-quotations","tag-art","tag-autobiography","tag-criticism","tag-georgeorwell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ael","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39329"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50422,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39329\/revisions\/50422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}