This Is Not My Memoir
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This Is Not My Memoir By Andre Gregory and Todd London. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 224 pages, $27.) Andre Gregory's look back on his life — and it is just that, even though the title claims.
Friendship often begins in aspiration and projection, as one or both parties see in the other qualities – frequently intangible and nebulous – that they admire, or envy, or that they believe themselves to lack. Sometimes we feel that something of the other might rub off on us, that we might be, to invert Philip Larkin’s thoughts about procreation, increased rather than diluted. I am an emotional person and I show it very openly in my personal life.” Building on his earlier memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life, he talks in American. THIS IS NOT MY MEMOIR is a wonderful book that delivers a powerful message for these troubled times. Andre Gregory's life is an important reminder that life goes on regardless of the vicissitudes of history (including pandemic) and that in some small way what each of us does with our allotted time on this earth can not only inspire others, but awaken our true selves. No other presidential memoir is likely to be so lively. Bill Clinton is hard to dismiss, and so is an account of his extraordinary life.” - The Tennessean “A reading of MyLife is a necessity for lovers of good autobiograpy.
Andre Gregory
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Overview
Jerzy Grotowski Life
This is Not My Memoir tells the life story of André Gregory, iconic theatre director, writer, and actor. For the first time, Gregory shares memories from a life lived for art, including stories from the making of My Dinner with André. Taking on the dizzying, wondrous nature of a fever dream, This is Not My Memoir includes fantastic and fantastical stories that take the reader from wartime Paris to golden-age Hollywood, from avant-garde theaters to monasteries in India. Along the way we meet Jerzy Grotowski, Helene Weigel, Gregory Peck, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Wallace Shawn, and many other larger-than-life personalities.
This is Not My Memoir is a collaboration between Gregory and Todd London who create a portrait of an artist confronting his later years. Here, too, are the reflections of a man who only recently learned how to love. What does it mean to create art in a world that often places little value on the process of creating it? And what does it mean to confront the process of aging when your greatest work of art may well be your own life?