Allegorizings
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2021]
Physical Description
xxiv, 236 pages ; 22 cm
Summary
"Jan Morris (1926-2020), the world-renowned writer, delivers her final volume, brimming with vibrant reminiscenses, meditations on daily life, and mini-essays on everything from maturity to whistling to Princess Diana. Not so long ago, feeling intimations of mortality, Jan Morris embarked on a wholly novel literary enterprise. What began as a series of high-minded letters to her late daughter-in the style of Lord Chesterfield addressing his son-quickly transformed itself into a potpourri of mini-essays and vibrant reminiscences, organized around experiences both majestic and mundane, from traveling the world with her lifelong partner, Elizabeth, to sneezing and kissing and simply growing old. So Allegorizings came to be, and so Morris decided that it should only be published upon her death, not because she had anything to hide but, merely, in parting. Featuring essays largely written in the early twenty-first century, Allegorizings reflects, above all, Morris's steadfast conviction that nothing is only what it seems. In fact, she observes, everything is allegory. Indeed, in Morris's telling, even life-the whole conundrum of existence-is one long, majestically impenetrable allegory. Taking us from the separatist hippie colony of Bolinas, California, to her home country of Wales, and introducing us to Nepalese Sherpas and elderly cruise-goers alike, Morris follows the throughline of allegory throughout her works"--