Is This My Autobiography?

Sayers is using that observation as the conclusion of a chapter discussing the writing of autobiography, a particular form of art which has obvious relevance to a rather noteworthy Creative Act of God. What follows is not directly related to what Sayers is arguing, but, since Sayers was writing a Great Book, it set my mind wandering into all sorts of directions.

After reading Sayers’ chapter on autobiography, I got to ruminating about my own life (shocking) and once again faced the realization that a biography of my life would be pretty dull stuff.  

When I have said this to people in the past, there is almost always an immediate objection.  It seems that saying one’s life would make a dull biography is taken as a strong version of self-deprecation.  

There is apparently rampant confusion of the two sentences: 1) “My biography would be dull” and 2) “My life is worthless.”  

But, those two sentences are not even remotely the same.  My life is not worthless, yet I have a hard time imagining anyone wanting to read a book-length treatment of it.  I was born, grew up, went to school, got married, got a job, had kids.  Nothing exciting there.  So, I cannot even imagine writing an autobiography.

This made me wonder about whether Sayers’ remarks quoted above were accurate or not.  How would I know?

Then it hit me.  I have a blog.  This blog has no real content other than a Faithful Record of My Thoughts over Time.  Which strangely sounds a lot like autobiography.  Am I writing an autobiography without even knowing it?  The mind reels.

If so, which is it:  do I have an insensitivity (Sayers’ “insensitiveness” is a rather ugly word, no?) to danger or a supernatural courage?  

Clearly the former.  Then again, there really isn’t much of a danger here—after all, I am a tenured professor.  

(My wife is constantly worried that my blog will somehow lead to some dire result, but when pressed, she can never actually figure out what could actually happen to me if someone (who?) took offense.  My wife has neither an insensitivity to danger nor supernatural courage—and perhaps not coincidentally, she doesn’t write autobiography.  More from my wife anon.)

Pursuing the Blog as Autobiography line a bit further:  is this blog an honest autobiography?  

As Sayers notes, no autobiography can be the whole of the author, it is inherently a partial revelation due to the limitation of the form.  Obviously I am more than my blog.  

But, if we imagine handing a set of blog entries to a person who knew nothing about me, would the impression formed from nothing other than what was written in this place bear any resemblance to Reality?  What strange creature would be conjured up by the contents herein?  

That is one of those questions which would generate an answer which it is probably better not to know.  Yet, it is also one of those questions that once asked, makes one wonder.

And then:  if this blog is a form of autobiography, then perhaps my autobiography isn’t as dull as I would have thought.  While my conventional biography would be quite dull, I have read some Great Books and had some Great Conversations over the years, and a record of those books and conversations is potentially not without interest.  

However she added that blogs were much worse than autobiography.  Traditional autobiography required that the contents pass muster with an editor before they were broadcast to the world.  Blogs have no such editor.  

These days, anybody can feel free to broadcast his life and thoughts to the world, whether such writing is worthy of attention or not (and for some reason, my wife looked at Your Humble Narrator with a knowing glance when mentioning the latter option).  

Insensitive to the danger (see above), I then asked why people would feel the need to write an autobiography.  “Narcissism.”  My wife didn’t miss a beat in giving that answer.  Blogging is the ultimate form of narcissism, concluded my wife.  One assumes that one’s every thought is worthy of attention and so one blogs.  

Apparently my wife thinks I am a Narcissist.