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Elegy for Iris, by John Bayley
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With remarkable tenderness, John Bayley recreates his passionate love affair with Iris Murdoch--world-renowned writer and philosopher, and his wife of forty-two years--and poignantly describes the dimming of her brilliance due to Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a story about the ephemeral beauty of youth and the sobering reality of what it means to grow old, but its ultimate power is that Bayley discovers great hope and joy in his celebration of Iris's life and their love. In its grasp of life's frailty and its portrayal of one of the great literary romances of this century, Elegy for Iris is a mesmerizing work of art that will be read for generations.
- Sales Rank: #539021 in Books
- Color: Yellow
- Brand: Picador
- Published on: 1999-11-20
- Released on: 1999-11-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .81" w x 5.50" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 275 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
In one of literary history's ghastlier ironies, Iris Murdoch, the author of such highly intellectual and philosophical novels as A Severed Head and Under the Net, was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease, which slowly destroys reasoning powers, memory, even the ability to speak coherently. Her husband, English literary critic John Bayley, unsparingly depicts his wife's affliction in prose as elegant and accessible as hers always was. Readers may wince at the spectacle of Murdoch glued to the TV watching the Teletubbies program, unable to perform tasks as simple as dressing herself and prey to devastating anxiety as the world becomes less and less comprehensible to her. We understand Bayley's occasional fits of rage when his caretaking chores overwhelm him. Yet in the end his memoir is touching, even inspiring. As he recalls their first meetings and marriage in the 1950s, it becomes clear that theirs was always an unconventional union, in which solitude was as important to each of them as togetherness and Bayley was content to let Murdoch keep her inner life to herself. He loves Iris, the woman, not the intellect, and he conveys an essential sweetness about his wife that endures even as her mental faculties deteriorate. This totally unsentimental account of their life and her illness is nonetheless a heartbreaker. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
It is seldom that someone at once so brilliant and so visible as novelist Iris Murdoch develops Alzheimer's disease in full public view; seldom, also, that a sufferer from this dreadful malady has so skilled and loving an interpreter by her side. Bayley, a noted literary critic (and, recently, novelist) in his own right, has been married to Murdoch for 40 years, and part of the charm of this enormously affecting memoir lies in the ways in which he shows the affections of old age as in no way slower than the passions of youth. Murdoch was already a dashing and rather mysterious figure when she and Bayley met in the Oxford of the 1950s; she was a philosophy don at a women's college who had just written a much-admired first novel; he was a bright, rather naive graduate student. Something mutually childlike clicked between them, however, and a naked swim in the River Isis (which later became a fond habit lasting even into Iris's illness) cemented their loving friendship. Writing with great tenderness and grace, Bayley evokes their long, warm, mutually trusting marriage, and introduces in the gentlest way the moments, four years ago, when he realized that his wife's sense of reality and of herself were slipping away. She is now anxious, repetitious and often nonsensical in her speech, but still suffused with the same quizzical sweetness and absolute trust he loved in her from the start. Few people afflicted with an Alzheimer's partner can be as self-effacing and endlessly patient as Bayley, but in a way almost as mysterious as the creation of a Murdoch novel, he evokes depths of understanding and warmth that seem scarcely ruffled by the breezes of the conscious mind. This beautiful book could hardly help being deeply consoling to anyone thus afflicted; it is also a compelling study of the overthrow of a remarkable spirit. First serial to the New Yorker.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
English author and philosopher Iris Murdoch is best known for her novels, which are filled with characters embroiled in philosophical conflicts. In this memoir, her husband, a renowned literary critic, presents his insights into her creativity, her personality, and their relationship. Even after 42 years of marriage, Murdoch remains an enigma to him. Though he always felt safe and comfortable with her?"protected from the world"?he had "no idea of what she was doing or how." She seemed to spread "an involuntary aura of beneficence and goodwill," yet it was in her ceaseless invention that she seemed to live most fully. Reminiscences of the past are juxtaposed with the reality of the present, in which Bayley tries to cope with the daily frustrations of caring for Murdoch now that she has Alzheimer's disease. His bouts of worry, anger, and pity are always tempered by his deep concern for her welfare. This book will appeal to Murdoch fans and is appropriate for public and academic libraries.?Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Alzheimer's Takes A Hand in The Game
By John Thorndike
An elegant book which seems to drift along, sometimes idly, through the lives of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. In fact, Bayley has structured his memoir with great care and is completely in control.
I originally picked the book up because of my interest in Alzheimer's. There is little on this through the first section of the book, labeled "Then," but Bayley's prose is nimble and his observations about his courtship with Iris and their long marriage are both fresh and tender. The title of the book is exact: this is an elegy for Iris Murdoch, and a lovely portrait of England's much-beloved writer.
Still, once Bayley enters the "Now" section my interest in the book doubles, as we hear how anxious Iris has grown, how uncommunicative and fearful. The last fifty pages of the book, presented as dated journal entries, are genius. Here are Iris and John, at ten every morning, watching Teletubbies on the BBC. "There are the rabbits!" Bayley says. The author, it's worth noting, is one of England's best-known literary critics--but one of his charms is how completely he yields to what has happened to Iris's mind, and to the demands of her care.
Not inevitably, of course, for there are times he grows frantic. "Iris's fear of other people if I'm not there is so piteous that I cannot bring myself to arrange for care-givers to `keep her company,' or to take her to the age therapy unit." As a result: "Wild wish to shout in her ear, `It's worse for me. It's much worse!'"
Day by day they grow physically closer, more tightly bound. Their old independence is gone, and Bayley must live with that. After forty years of taking their marriage for granted, he says, "marriage has decided it is tired of this, and is taking a hand in the game. Purposefully, persistently, involuntarily, our marriage is now getting somewhere. It is giving us no choice--and I am glad of that."
Bayley never pontificates. He has no helpful tricks, no suggestions on how to make things better. Instead, he gives us agile descriptions of how he and Iris swim together, lie in bed together, take trips together, go to parties and talk to strangers--as month by month it all grows more impossible. Like marriage, Alzheimer's has taken a hand in the game, which they will play out to the end.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Haunting, but uplifting
By Bluestalking Reader
John Bayley and Iris Murdoch had a rare relationship, the kind most of us dream of having. Two writers, working side by side, living their lives to the fullest, John Bayley and Iris Murdoch weren't so much a marriage as a team. Their support for each other's craft is laudable, and Bayley's reaction to losing his wife while she was still alive is heartbreaking and at times oddly humourous. You feel what Bayley must have felt, looking at the shell of the woman he'd spent most of his life with and hoping there was still some of her inside somewhere, and you laugh and cry right along with him. This book is a loving tribute to one of the greatest modern novelists and philosophers who ever lived, and I felt greatly enriched after reading this book. It has stayed with me ever since.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
thoughtful and enjoyable though sad
By William S Jamison
Clearly this is the best book of the three JB has written on Iris and her "friends and memories". The meaning of both are ambiguous since the books describe both people the two knew as well as abstract friends that are part of Alzheimer's. The memories are more certainly those of JB of course. He is the author. Most puzzling is his question concerning what memories Iris still had while her ability to communicate seemed to have gone. When a person has Alzheimer's is the internal world gone as well as the ability to express one's thoughts to others? This is tragic in the sense that Iris was always living in two worlds and in the end only lived in her own world so that the bridge was no longer there - or a worse tragedy, that she had already reached the precipice and gone over. Only her body was left perhaps. But this book, the first of the three JB wrote in this mode does focus more than the others and gives us more insights into Iris then the others. There are still plenty of his own memories that only include Iris as an end piece, though often the memory nicely elucidates some characteristic of the relationship JB has with Iris or a characteristic of Iris herself so they are nice. In general the book is thoughtful and enjoyable though sad.
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