Not Entitled : A Memoir

From a great critic of english literature, a different kind of text: a luminous account of his own life. Throughout this uniquely personal work, Frank Kermode touches on the deeper, lighter, ineffable issues of autobiography, and he does so with his characteristic grace, precision, and amused wisdom. Tracing his life from his childhood through his six years in the Royal Navy during World War II, from his student days in Liverpool to his battles at Cambridge over the literature curriculum and faculty, he shows us the miraculous connections between life and literature, between the world and the word; more, he transforms and ennobles both.

“An oddly beautiful, or beautifully odd, book--a witty and rueful exercise in self-deprecation.. . . Not Entitled remarkably conveys the 'microclimate' of depression at the heart of a clever diffidence while being steadily entertaining, and even poetical.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“A triumph of tone... Kermode has written mainly of the gentle shocks and surprises that compose the part of a life that we choose. He has remembered safely and remembered well.” —David Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review