Category: Autobiography

Every Wind of Doctrine: A Former Captive of Philosophy and Vain Deceit Remembers

First Grade, Holy Cross School, 1960

Yesterday, I thought out loud about this question; bit by bit, I’ll begin to answer it: How did an Irish-Italian Catholic kid from the Bronx break with the world of Marvel comics in the 1960s, discover philosophy, come under the influence of a notable communist, and a few years later follow an obscure dispensationalist Bible teacher and then a leading anarcho-capitalist theoretician—all while studying guitar theory under a jazz giant, working as Folk City’s doorman and later for a world-class architect?

A day later, I can think of at least a dozen major influences that I mercifully omitted from that already intolerably overlong sentence.

Sixty years ago, I could not ask, let alone answer, such a question for the simple reason that I was unself-conscious. It’s hard to recall what unself-consciousness felt like because memory tends to impose mature, reflective categories onto what we selectively remember. Yet, I must make the effort. There is a transition from directly experiencing what we enjoy to reflecting on how we might shape our lives and the world around us.

I had a notion that there were struggles, but also that they were all “settled” by authority—parental, ecclesiastical, social, or governmental. That made my world full of interest but, more importantly, safe. Dangers existed, but they were manageable. Unmanageable dangers belonged to movies and comic books.

That romantic sense of safety was hard to maintain after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, followed within five years (from my 10th to my 15th year) by the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. It was bewildering for a pre-teen and teenager to live through. And what I found confusing or unsettling, I put out of my mind. The world as mediated by movies and television was my norm. I vaguely sensed that reality could be different, but I couldn’t work up enough interest to pursue the idea. My unself-consciousness was a blissful state, one I subconsciously knew better than to disturb. It rarely, if ever, occurred to me that one day I would have to make my way in a world beyond the television or movie screen. Continue reading “Every Wind of Doctrine: A Former Captive of Philosophy and Vain Deceit Remembers”

The Challenge of Autobiography

When you write about your life, you have to connect the particular people, places, and events that shaped you to strangers who will view those particulars through the lens of their experiences. For that, there’s no guidebook. To you, they are abstractions: you don’t know them; they don’t know you. All you have in common is your humanity.

You’re not writing to make them care about you. They care about themselves—and about your story only to the extent that it illuminates theirs: their lives, struggles, and fears.

So if I ask, “How did an Irish-Italian Catholic kid from the Bronx break with the world of Marvel comics in the 1960s, discover philosophy, come under the influence of a notable communist, and a few years later follow an obscure dispensationalist Bible teacher and then a leading anarcho-capitalist theoretician—all while studying guitar theory under a jazz giant, working as Folk City’s doorman and later for a world-class architect?,” the likely response is, “Who cares?” or “Sounds like a very confused kid!”

But if the narrator frames his story as a key to unlocking history that they’re curious about—or, even better, lived through—and hints at answers to questions they’ve long asked themselves, then he won’t just attract an audience. He’ll hold them. And if he delivers, they won’t just stay. They’ll bring others to the fire.

[To be continued]

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