That episode is a symptom of the over-arching problem with this book. The tone is far too personally defensive (we know very clearly, for example, how not gay and not masochistic boarding school made the author!) and this distracts the reader away from the prose by making her wonder what Hughes has to defend. And then when she tries to re-engage in his prose, it too often loops awkwardly backwards into further defensiveness.
The memoir seems set up for a sequel focusing on Hughes’ life and career in the United States, and I'm already waiting for it. Seeing the upward progression of the quality of Things I Didn’t Know from a weak start to a coherent and interesting finish shows clearly the next installment should be a really good book.
However, the progression from lousy to good is also infuriating. It reminds us that a great writer and critic like Hughes has no excuse for publishing work like the first two thirds of Things I Didn’t Know except haste or a sort of conflicted, guilty self-consciousness that he should have dealt with before daring to publish his memoirs.
Going into the Christmas season, I can recommend almost any of his other books as gifts, especially the recent Goya, which has recently been re-issued in paperback. But elitist who prefers good to bad though Hughes claims to be, this first installment of his memoirs thumps him into the same camp as any other pop franchise that values output over quality.
Wait for the second. If you can't, Things I Didn't Know is published by Knopf and is available in Canada through Random House, as are many of his superior books.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!