From Christopher Robin to Death in Venice, a Life Seen Through Books -- Andrew Crofts

 

I have a habit of seeing stages of my life in terms of books or films that seemed to reflect everything I was experiencing or feeling at the time. Is this, I wonder, how we make sense of our lives, attempting to give the chaos and serendipities of reality a narrative arc where none really exists?

My early years were pure Christopher Robin, an only child in the countryside, whose best friends were pets and toys, entirely unaware that I had arrived at the end of a long line of privilege; white, male, middle class and British.

The idylls of “Hundred Acre Wood”, (and “Never-Never Land” for that matter), were then replaced with a mixture of “Jennings Goes to School” and “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” – culminating in the cathartic anarchy of Lindsay Anderson’s film, “If”, which was released just as I was reaching the end of my patience with educational institutions.

“Down and Out in Paris and London”, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” and “Of Human Bondage” reflected the struggle to survive and the deep fear of becoming trapped in a routine job or destroyed by unrequited love.

Writers like Graham Greene, who painted exotic pictures of destinations like Haiti and Saigon, lured me out into the wider world in the following years, while at the same time I aspired to “Brideshead Revisited” and "The Great Gatsby", while attempting to build a Richard Curtis-style family life.

So now what are we facing? “Death in Venice” maybe? Or “Love in the Time of Cholera”?