Thursday, February 21, 2008

Schaeffer on Schaeffer, continued, "The Little Shit from Switzerland"

Interesting nickname Frank got, and interesting that he volunteers it in Crazy for God. Still more interesting that he seems to have no qualms more or less admitting he deserved the nickname. Something tells me that Frank has been more circumspect and fair than some of his pre-emptive critics may believe. That he notes that with a maudlin sort of self-pity he did some good paintings is telling, because even for a generally generous reader assuming good will Frank does drip with a bit of self-pity here and there in the book, more for things he wishes he hadn't done (it seems) than for what his parents did or didn't do.

I'm in section 3 and if I could have made any recommendation that Frank wouldn't have listened to, it would have been to trim section 2 a bit. Of course one's memoir is one's own and you can write in it whatever you wish so I suppose section 2 may yield unpredicted significance by the time I finish the book. It helps to establish what some of Frank's non-fans may be at pains to dispute, that Francis and Edith could be very hands-off parents in both good and terrible ways. But this is something to blog about later.

No comments: