Saturday, 26 May 2007

Commonplaces

Ever since I came across W.H. Auden's commonplace book, the name of which I forget, I've been collecting extracts that appeal to me in one way or another. It's the most impersonal, and knowing, form of autobiography there is, and a blog, which is also impersonal and knowing, seems a good place to store/expose it. So I'll start with one that feels particularly apposite at the moment. It comes from Under My Skin, by Doris Lessing:

... it is a commonplace of sociology and psychology that a group anywhere, no matter what its first inspiration, political, literary, even criminal, tends in the end to become ‘religious’ ...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very good choice!! I choose an extract from her autobiography too, during a creative writing course

Charles Lambert said...

Yes, she's a wonderful writer, always interesting and worth reading even when the work doesn't come off, as it often doesn't these days (and I must admit that I haven't yet read her latest novel, called, I think, THE CLEFT.