Last semester, I took a first-year seminar taught by a seventy-three-year-old African law professor -- he also served as the former Attorney General for the Ethiopian government, wrote the charter for the OAU (now the African Union), helped win his homeland's (Eritrea's) independence, and later authored their national constitution. With these incredible accomplishments, one would think that each lecture would be life-changing or profound, but instead we heard mainly stories from his childhood. I had to read his autobiography to even know most of his accomplishments.
This book reminds me a lot of Dr. Selassie -- Henry Adams, the old man, looking back on his life and wondering what it was and how he got to places he'd been. I particularly like the quote "everyone must bear his own universe" in the first chapter. Adams does a fantastic job capturing his puzzlement at his existence without becoming terribly existential, egotistical, or boring. The introduction to my book (which I was again too cheap to buy and have on loan from the library) has a section on how Adams used the third person to better control the reader's viewpoint. This approach really makes me feel better about autobiographies, which in general are tend to be self-absorbed. My hope is that as this book progresses we will get to see how Adams got where he did rather than face a constant barrage of super-introspectivity. On the whole, I am very excited to read this book.
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