My Life And Loves, vol 5

Начало книги

This fifth volume of Frank Harris's memoirs has a history which must now be made public, although I cannot do so without admitting to a feat of truancy dramatically opposed to publishing ethics.

I have recounted elsewhere the unfortunate phase of my career when I lost my first publishing firm, in which the remains of the Obelisk Press had been incorporated. My father, Jack Kahane, had bought the publishing rights of My Life And Loves from Frank Harris in the early Thirties and since then the four volumes put out by the Obelisk Press had enjoyed a large and steady sale.

Many years later, after the Obelisk Press had become the property of my powerful rivals, Hachette-much against my will-they went on printing and selling My Life and Loves year after year.

I had first read the book when a boy, and I had been impressed by the ludicrous cheek of the little Irish adventurer. I was elated by his treatment of the reader, the half-amused, half disguised unconcern with which he fed his cock-and-bull stories to the gullible. The large layers of sexy episodes came between rich slices of literary and political souvenirs with model regularity; the cocksure, vulgar tone of the recital was quite wonderful. And yet, Harris had certainly been a sincere and courageous man in his own funny way. He had some generous ideas, and he had been a plucky fighter when it came to defending some rather interesting causes; alas, self-adulation had prevented him from being quite the universal hero he fancied himself to be in literature, sex, or politics. But he is certainly responsible to a large extent for the invention of modern journalism, whether he should be thanked for that or not.

Читать дальше →