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Myself Through Others, Memoirs
Unfortunately David Watmough does not reveal much of himself through others in Myself Through Others, Memoirs (Dundurn $24.99).
As the first homosexual writer out of the closet in British Columbia in the late 1950s, David Watmough will disappoint anyone looking for a racy tell-all a la Frank Harris, My Life and Loves. Not an autobiography, this is a tell-some, with only occasional lapses into pique.
Although David Watmough briefly describes W.H. Auden's penis and refers to the "hammock-ubiquity" of sexually aroused sailors in the aftermath of World War II, the recollections in Myself Through Others err on the side of discretion.
Watmough even spares Stephen Spender, "the most mendacious predator it has been my misfortune to meet," by ultimately thanking Spender for enabling him to meet Raymond Chandler.
We learn he and his partner Floyd St. Clair once met a paranoid Tennessee Williams during a dinner party at Max Wyman's house and he recalls having a park bench conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt. Irked by being mistaken for Dylan Thomas sometimes, Watmough chooses to accord Thomas only one paragraph, rather than a chapter, but he does describe watching Pierre Trudeau cut up his children's food in an Ottawa restaurant, while Margaret chatted with her parents.
The list of his contacts includes T.S. Eliot, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Wallace Stegner, actress Jean Arthur and politician Clement Atlee. But this amounts to a slim book with a wide range, an exercise in literary cruising.
978-1-55002-799-0
[BCBW 2008] "Memoir"
As the first homosexual writer out of the closet in British Columbia in the late 1950s, David Watmough will disappoint anyone looking for a racy tell-all a la Frank Harris, My Life and Loves. Not an autobiography, this is a tell-some, with only occasional lapses into pique.
Although David Watmough briefly describes W.H. Auden's penis and refers to the "hammock-ubiquity" of sexually aroused sailors in the aftermath of World War II, the recollections in Myself Through Others err on the side of discretion.
Watmough even spares Stephen Spender, "the most mendacious predator it has been my misfortune to meet," by ultimately thanking Spender for enabling him to meet Raymond Chandler.
We learn he and his partner Floyd St. Clair once met a paranoid Tennessee Williams during a dinner party at Max Wyman's house and he recalls having a park bench conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt. Irked by being mistaken for Dylan Thomas sometimes, Watmough chooses to accord Thomas only one paragraph, rather than a chapter, but he does describe watching Pierre Trudeau cut up his children's food in an Ottawa restaurant, while Margaret chatted with her parents.
The list of his contacts includes T.S. Eliot, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Wallace Stegner, actress Jean Arthur and politician Clement Atlee. But this amounts to a slim book with a wide range, an exercise in literary cruising.
978-1-55002-799-0
[BCBW 2008] "Memoir"
Submitted on September 5, 2008 in By David.
