Cirrus@Austlit

'I've been asked for a memoir for this occasion yet I am uncomfortable writing directly about myself. I prefer the mask of fiction. In this preference it is self-deception I fear most, for who but the self-deceived would claim to be able to write with moral detachment about themselves? I am also cautious of the fate of WB Yeats, the poet, of whom Richard Ellmann wrote, 'The autobiographical muse enticed him only to betray him, abandoning him to ultimate perplexity as to the meaning of his experiences' (Yeats, 2). Memoir does not offer us a sure means for contacting the deeper dualities of the self. For his journey to the heart of darkness, fiction is a more certain, if more oblique , way.' (Author's introduction)