Looking Back

Résumé du livre

David Osborn was born surrounded by a 19th century way of life that no longer exists and which for a child was for the most part, oppressive. As he grew toward adulthood, he became more and more aware of its narrow restrictive limitations on individuality; that it had nothing to do with the present, let alone the future; and that if he were to make use of the gift of life, to live without fear, he would have to leave it in spirit even more than physically. This memoir is about breaking free and creating a life of his own on his own terms. In his words: "I am a writer. It's a profession and a way of life I never planned on. I never had any particular desire to write. I backed into it, almost by error, and it wasn't until I'd been writing for some time, simply to earn a living, that I suddenly, and not without a sense of real surprise, fell in love with it. Writing has been my passion and my life ever since. Memory can be revealing. In delving for long periods into my past I have uncovered dynamics and developments among the older generation during my childhood which resolved long unanswered questions in my mind about major family issues of later years and, to a degree, laid to rest the always nagging unease of not knowing when it came to blank spots in my life. But memory can also be misleading. It can be colored and exaggerated by subsequent events, or by wishing what was remembered to be otherwise. Now, over 92 years after my life began, events, people and places in the long procession of time have returned to me, many as vivid still as when they occurred, and lodged in a memory album whose pages, for the most part, are otherwise slowly fading into the abyss that is time."