'A self-portrait that is as brilliant original as White's fiction and drama.
'In this remarkable self-portrait Patrick White explains how on the very rare occasions when he re-reads a passage from one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. This 'unknown' is the man interviewers and visiting students expect to find, but 'unable to produce him', he prefers to remain private, or as private as anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature can ever be. In this book is the self Patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the glass.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage ed.).
'Flaws in the Glass, by Australian Nobel laureate Patrick White, ostensibly an autobiography, is offered to the reading public as a self-portrait. In my paper I do not intend to go deep into the matter of technical distinctions between different forms of autobiography, but a few remarks need to be made on the subtitle of this autobiographical narrative accompanying its metaphorical title as a tell-tale definition of the author holding up the mirror to himself and to the teacher.' (p. 75)