Made it

I finished, on the dot, at 9:30pm. Last page. Last word.

I’m back to my pre-slumber reading routine after the summer hiatus, with a slight difference. Four pillows are piled as high as four pillows can be piled. A strategic shuffle to squash them against the bedhead, to condense and consolidate, even solidify, so that I can comfortably sit upright.

Use a chair? But then it wouldn’t be pre-slumber reading.

Memoirs can be painful. Not because of the obvious comparison with one’s own life but because a certain level of arrogance is needed to write a memoir. (I appreciate the hypocrisy, given a degree of the same is required to create a personal blog.) Memoirs become painful if the author’s arrogance is not subdued or hidden.

Memoirs can be tolerable, even enjoyable, if there is sufficient engagement with the history of events, with the uniqueness of place, with the swirl of society moving around the author. The external must touch, lightly but sufficiently, on the personal.

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Looking back, skimming the pages, I can see where Sir Patrick Stewart did achieve a balance between his external and internal worlds in Making It So, but why wasn’t it obvious while I was reading?

Perhaps the topic – life as an actor – shifts the balance, inevitably, even essentially, to read heavier on the personal than I might prefer.

Thinking on this has tempered my view. I suddenly feel a little kinder as I look across at the book’s spine, it’s bright silver text embedded in black, until I notice disappointment rising at the sight of the author’s name excessively larger than the book’s title.

My positive memory of this book is the surprisingly heady transition from skipping through a list of small screen credits to a sudden deep immersion into Waiting for Godot. Albeit a far too brief immersion.

Why? And, in searching for that answer, I find what I wanted from this memoir; perhaps from any memoir. It is to see on the page the connection between the internal and external. It’s not just the internal or the external or a delicate balance between the two. It is the insight into the connection that I value.

In Sir Patrick’s memoir, it is the connection to the physical scripts and the performances that I probably wanted more of. There is a book where I think Dame Judi Dench does just that. I must find it ….

Having finished Making It So, it is time to select the next book. A small grey spine is buried towards the bottom of a pile of patiently-waiting and partly-started volumes. The cover, with the title so much larger than the author, boldly proclaimed Waiting for Godot.

I’d forgotten it was there.

I turn the book over to find that the bookshop’s price tag is still in place – Read On Books Pagewood – and a memory stirs. Quickly checking the dust jacket of Making It So and, yes, both books were purchased at the same time in full knowledge that Stewart had performed in the play.

I have no choice but to love a moment of surprise manufactured by forgetfulness.

This script for Godot is a small softcover, so I abandon the makeshift chair of pillows and return to the literal position of curling up with a good book. The Preface is exactly what I’d expect; historical context and an introduction suitable for the uninitiated.

I skip a few pages ahead, checking to see what awaits tomorrow. Act One may be my undoing. This is my first script since my ‘heady’ days in amateur dramatics, so many years ago. I tend to avoid books heavy in dialogue because I can’t keep up with who is saying what. It is my hope that the very limited number of players on the stage will be my salvation, because I really want to experience this.

References

2023. Stewart, Patrick. Making It So: A memoir. Simon and Schuster Inc.

1952. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. This edition first published by Faber and Faber Ltd in 2010.