Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography

"Deeply moving . . . . Page after page recalls a vanished world."— The New York Times Book Review "A cornucopia of discernment, judgment, and wisdom."xa0— San Francisco Chronicle "James neither overintellectualizes nor sentimentalizes. . . . Writing about commonplace events, [she] gives them weight and substance and so confirms their reality, investing them with a radiance that illuminates this fragment of autobiography."xa0— The Washington Post From the Inside Flap he turned seventy-seven, internationally acclaimed mystery writer P. D. James embarked on an endeavor unlike any other in her distinguished career: she decided to write a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Over the course of a year she set down not only the events and impressions of her extraordinarily active life, but also the memories, joys, discoveries, and crises of a lifetime. This enchantingly original volume is the result.Time to Be in Earnest offers an intimate portrait of one of most accomplished women of our time. Here are vivid, revealing accounts of her school days in Cambridge in the 1920s and '30s, her happy marriage and the tragedy of her husband's mental illness, and the thrill of publishing her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962. As she recounts the decades of her exceptional life, James holds forth with wit and candor on such diverse subjects as the evolution of the detective novel, her deep love of the English countryside, her views of author tours and televisio On the day she turned seventy-seven, internationally acclaimed mystery writer P. D. James embarked on an endeavor unlike any other in her distinguished career: she decided to write a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Over the course of a year she set down not only the events and impressions of her extraordinarily active life, but also the memories, joys, discoveries, and crises of a lifetime. This enchantingly original volume is the result. Time to Be in Earnest offers an intimate portrait of one of most accomplished women of our time. Here are vivid, revealing accounts of her school days in Cambridge in the 1920s and '30s, her happy marriage and the tragedy of her husband's mental illness, and the thrill of publishing her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962. As she recounts the decades of her exceptional life, James holds forth with wit and candor on such diverse subjects as the evolution of the detective novel, her deep love of the English countryside, her views of author tours and television adaptations, and her life-long obsession with Jane Austen. Wise and frank, engaging and graceful, this "fragment of autobiography" will delight and surprise P. D. James's admirers the world over. P.D. James is the author of 14 previous books, many of which have been adapted for television. She is the recipient of many honours, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement and 1999 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. She lives in London, England. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. PrologueA diary, if intended for publication (and how many written by a novelistare not?), is the most egotistical form of writing. The assumption isinevitably that what the writer thinks, does, sees, eats and drinks on adaily basis is as interesting to others as it is to himself or herself.And what motive could possibly induce people to undertake the tedium ofthis daily task--for surely at times it must be tedious--not just for oneyear, which seems formidable enough, but sometimes for a lifetime? As alover of diaries, I am glad that so many have found time and energy andstill do. How much of interest, excitement, information, history andfascinating participation in another's life would be lost without thediaries of John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh,Fanny Burney and Francis Kilvert. Even the diary of a fictionalVictorian, Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest, "simply avery young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, andconsequently meant for publication," would have its appeal.I have never up until now kept a diary, largely because of indolence.During my career as a bureaucrat, a working day spent mainly in draftingreports or speeches and writing letters or minutes left little incentivefor further writing, particularly the recording of trivia.And any writing, if it is worth doing, requires care, and I havepreferred to spend that care on my fiction. My motive now is to recordjust one year that otherwise might be lost, not only to children andgrandchildren who might have an interest but, with the advance of ageand perhaps the onset of the dreaded Alzheimer's, lost also to me. Itwill inevitably catch on the threads of memory as burrs stick to a coat,so that this will be a partial autobiography and a defence against thosewho, with increasing frequency, in person or by letter, announce thatthey have been commissioned to write my biography and invite myco-operation. Always after my refusal there is the response, "Of course,once you have died there will be biographies. Surely it's better to haveone now when you can participate." Nothing is more disagreeable than theidea of having one now and of participation. Fortunately I am anappallingly bad letter-writer and both my children are reticent, but atleast if they and others who enjoy my work are interested in what it waslike to be born two years after the end of the First World War and tolive for seventy-eight years in this tumultuous century, there will besome record, however inadequate.I have a friend who assiduously keeps a diary, recording merely thefacts of each day, and seems to find satisfaction in looking back over,say, five years and proclaiming that "This was the day I went toSouthend-on-Sea with my sister." Perhaps the reading of those wordsbrings back a whole day in its entirety--sound, sense, atmosphere,thought--as the smell of decaying seaweed can bring in a rush the essenceof long-forgotten summers. The diaries capturing adolescence, I suspect,are mainly therapeutic, containing thoughts that cannot be spoken aloud,particularly in the family, and a relief to overpowering emotions,whether of joy or sorrow. A diary, too, can be a defence againstloneliness. It is significant that many adolescent diaries begin "DearDiary." The book, carefully hidden, is both friend and confidant, onefrom whom neither criticism nor treachery need be feared. The dailywords comfort, justify, absolve. Politicians are great keepers ofdiaries, apparently dictating them daily for eventual use in theinevitable autobiography, laying down ammunition as they might lay downport. But politicians' diaries are invariably dull, Alan Clark's being anotable exception. Perhaps all these motives are subordinate to the needto capture time, to have some small mastery over that which so mastersus, to assure ourselves that, as the past can be real, so the future mayhold the promise of reality. I write, therefore I am.Perhaps some compulsive diarists write to validate this experience. Lifefor them is experienced with more intensity when recollected intranquillity than it is at the living moment. After all, this happens infiction. When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, theaction are clear in my mind before I start work--or so I believe. But itis only when these imaginings are written down, passing, it seems almostphysically, from my brain down the arm to my moving hand that they beginto live and move and have their being and assume a different kind oftruth.A diary, by definition, is a daily record. I very much doubt whetherthis proposed record of one year in my life will be a diary within theproper meaning of that word; certainly I can't see myself recording theevents of every day. I feel, too, that many social events can't properlybe mentioned since I have no intention of betraying confidences and someof the most interesting things I learn are said to me in confidence. Ilove gossip in other people's diaries, while recognizing that itsinterest is in inverse proportion to its truth, but I suspect that thisrecord will have little to offer in the way of titillating revelations.And to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness ofmemory. When I was very young and leaving church with my mother, shetold me that the hymn we had sung, "Blessed Are the Pure in Heart," wassung at the funeral of a friend of hers who had died in childbirth withher baby during the great flu pandemic which followed the First WorldWar. Now I can never hear it without thinking of that young mother andher child, both dead before I was born. No effort of will can banish avague unfocused sadness from my thoughts every time that hymn is sung.And the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memoryis a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is notimmutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage ofprose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, everyautobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction anautobiography.So tomorrow, on 3rd August, I shall write the first entry in a recordwhich I propose to keep for one year, from my seventy-seventh to myseventy-eighth birthday. Will I persist with this effort? Only time willtell. And will I be here at the end of the year? At seventy-seven thatis not an irrational question. But then is it irrational at any age? Inyouth we go forward caparisoned in immortality; it is only, I think, inage that we fully realize the transitoriness of life.There is much that I remember but which is painful to dwell upon. I seeno need to write about these things. They are over and must be accepted,made sense of and forgiven, afforded no more than their proper place ina long life in which I have always known that happiness is a gift, not aright. And there are other matters over which memory has exercised itsself-defensive censorship. Like dangerous and unpredictable beasts theylie curled in the pit of the subconscious. This seems a mercifuldispensation; I have no intention of lying on a psychiatrist's couch inan attempt to hear their waking growls. But then I am a writer. Wefortunate ones seldom have need for such an expedient. If, as onepsychiatrist wrote--was it Anthony Storr?--"creativity is the successfulresolution of internal conflict," then I, a purveyor of popular genrefiction, and that great genius Jane Austen have the same expedient fortaming our sleeping tigers. Read more