Elegy for Iris [Paperback]

John Bayley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 1999

With remarkable tenderness, John Bayley recreates his passionate love affair with Iris Murdoch--world-renowned writer and philosopher, and his wife of forty-two years--and poignantly describes the dimming of her brilliance due to Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a story about the ephemeral beauty of youth and the sobering reality of what it means to grow old, but its ultimate power is that Bayley discovers great hope and joy in his celebration of Iris's life and their love. In its grasp of life's frailty and its portrayal of one of the great literary romances of this century, Elegy for Iris is a mesmerizing work of art that will be read for generations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In one of literary history's ghastlier ironies, Iris Murdoch, the author of such highly intellectual and philosophical novels as A Severed Head and Under the Net, was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease, which slowly destroys reasoning powers, memory, even the ability to speak coherently. Her husband, English literary critic John Bayley, unsparingly depicts his wife's affliction in prose as elegant and accessible as hers always was. Readers may wince at the spectacle of Murdoch glued to the TV watching the Teletubbies program, unable to perform tasks as simple as dressing herself and prey to devastating anxiety as the world becomes less and less comprehensible to her. We understand Bayley's occasional fits of rage when his caretaking chores overwhelm him. Yet in the end his memoir is touching, even inspiring. As he recalls their first meetings and marriage in the 1950s, it becomes clear that theirs was always an unconventional union, in which solitude was as important to each of them as togetherness and Bayley was content to let Murdoch keep her inner life to herself. He loves Iris, the woman, not the intellect, and he conveys an essential sweetness about his wife that endures even as her mental faculties deteriorate. This totally unsentimental account of their life and her illness is nonetheless a heartbreaker. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

It is seldom that someone at once so brilliant and so visible as novelist Iris Murdoch develops Alzheimer's disease in full public view; seldom, also, that a sufferer from this dreadful malady has so skilled and loving an interpreter by her side. Bayley, a noted literary critic (and, recently, novelist) in his own right, has been married to Murdoch for 40 years, and part of the charm of this enormously affecting memoir lies in the ways in which he shows the affections of old age as in no way slower than the passions of youth. Murdoch was already a dashing and rather mysterious figure when she and Bayley met in the Oxford of the 1950s; she was a philosophy don at a women's college who had just written a much-admired first novel; he was a bright, rather naive graduate student. Something mutually childlike clicked between them, however, and a naked swim in the River Isis (which later became a fond habit lasting even into Iris's illness) cemented their loving friendship. Writing with great tenderness and grace, Bayley evokes their long, warm, mutually trusting marriage, and introduces in the gentlest way the moments, four years ago, when he realized that his wife's sense of reality and of herself were slipping away. She is now anxious, repetitious and often nonsensical in her speech, but still suffused with the same quizzical sweetness and absolute trust he loved in her from the start. Few people afflicted with an Alzheimer's partner can be as self-effacing and endlessly patient as Bayley, but in a way almost as mysterious as the creation of a Murdoch novel, he evokes depths of understanding and warmth that seem scarcely ruffled by the breezes of the conscious mind. This beautiful book could hardly help being deeply consoling to anyone thus afflicted; it is also a compelling study of the overthrow of a remarkable spirit. First serial to the New Yorker.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: Picador (November 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312253826
• ISBN-13: 978-0312253820
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #627,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Sad August 23, 2000

By Lev Raphael

Format:Paperback

If you've lost a loved one to dementia, whether caused by Alzheimer's or strokes, you know that this dreadful change in your life can be--as a woman in Elegy for Iris notes so terribly--like "being chained to a corpse." You may feel you exist in a perpetual state of mourning, and release seems impossibly distant since the process of degeneration can last for a decade, fifteen years, or more.

Four years ago before this book was published, Alzheimer's began to chip away at acclaimed novelist Iris Murdoch and she started to lose memories, associations and connection with herself. Her husband of forty years, English critic John Bayley, has written a memoir about this escalating series of losses that is imbued with admiration, love, and gentle humor. Bayley compellingly interweaves descriptions of his wife's sad deterioration with stories of their courtship and long, contented marriage. What is remarkable about this narrative (which needed better editing, however), is that despite the very real tragedy of Alzheimer's, he is not bitter or self-pitying, and what links him and his wife now is anything but a chain.

Murdoch and Bayley seem to have given each other the freedom to live complete lives, however they needed to, and that freedom was a profound tie. "We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness each saw and was aware of in the other," he observes. And tracing their growing love for one another, he makes one envy the balance they found between separateness and companionship (which counterpoints their domestic squalor). From the earliest days onward, marriage and solitude were not contradictions for them. They could "be closely and physically entwined, and yet feel solitude's friendly presence, as warm and undesolating as contiguity itself."

All that reverberates strangely with the ways in which Murdoch now is shut off from him far more than she ever was as a creative artist, but seems to need the constant reassurance of his presence. She is like a child hungry for attention, but unable to communicate clearly, and sometimes needs to be gently shooed away so that he can have time to himself. Yet she returns, anxious, needful. Sometimes her confusions drive him into a rage, but she often responds to these outbursts with the same ameliorative calm she always had.

Given their long, happy marriage, Bayley and Murdoch's first meetings were comically inauspicious. In his late twenties and a graduate student teaching at Oxford after World War II, Bailey spied Murdoch bicycling past one day looking grumpy, grim, and not entirely attractive. Yet for Bailey, she was almost an apparition, a woman existing only in the moment--and for him alone. But his instantaneous fantasies were soon crushed when he met her at a party and realized she was merely another teacher. How ordinary! Worse still, she was clearly a popular and magnetic woman with many friends (and not a few lovers, he would learn). Though he tried, he never managed to make conversation with her that night, and when his next opportunity came at a dinner, he was daunted by the seriousness with which this philosophy teacher considered his most casual remarks.

On their first date he was oddly shocked by her brilliant red brocade dress which struck him as inappropriate for her, and she managed to fall down stairs as they entered a ball. But not much later they were laughing and sharing childhood confidences, and it's thanks to their childlike joy that the bonds between them were first knit, lasting even into her Alzheimer's. Rather miraculously, humor survives between them, even now that her memory has faded, leaving her incapable of finishing sentences and often lost in a state of "vacant despair." Bayley can still make Murdoch smile with silly jokes and rhymes. There's so much love (and quiet suffering) in Bayley's observation that a smile "transforms her face, bringing it back to what it was, and with an added glow that seems supernatural."

Murdoch's kindness, her affability, her lack of egotism about her career make for odd continuity with the generally sweet-natured woman she is under the spell of Alzheimer's, and Bayley's deep appreciation of these excellent qualities seems to undergird his current devotion. Time and again, the author makes the best of a bitter situation, and even finds aspects of it enjoyable. He manages, for instance, to find something delightful in regularly watching the British children's show "Teletubbies" with her. But all his fond memories and his loving attention to her in the present cannot veil the especial cruelty of watching a sharp-minded and fertile novelist "sail into the darkness," as Murdoch puts it herself in a moment of lucidity.

Among various literary subjects, Bayley has written about Henry James, and Elegy for Iris richly and warmly demonstrates a truth affirmed by a character in James's The Ambassadors: "The only safe thing is to give--it's what plays you least false."

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest" December 17, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

(...) I have been interested in Iris Murdoch for a long time, not really having a clue as to what her novels might be like, what I should expect from her; should I steel myself and keep guard, or quite to the contrary - open the door to her literary world and let myself immerse in it completely. As is consistent with my long-standing ritual, I approach the writer from unusual angles - this has certainly been the case with Iris Murdoch. Instead of listening to friendly spirits telling me this and that, I acted spontaneously, and started my exploration from a postmortem memoir written by her husband, John Bayley. Exploration it shall be, for having read this volume, I am absolutely certain to release the internal guard, and open the door to the unknown world of Iris.

"CLOSER AND CLOSER APART"

The memoir is an elegy for Iris, and it is not a typical biography, for it is written by her husband, with whom she spent over forty years together. Just like their marriage was, the introduction of Bayley to Iris was awkward, and I couldn't help but smile at Bayley's admission to his shortcomings as an admirer of Iris back in the fifties. Romantic at heart, helpless in practice, Bayley manages to attract Iris, and the story is indeed enchanting, even if told with such a burden of perspective of what happened later, or rather, just as he was writing the memoir. As is often the case with academics, they live in an unreal world of unmet expectations, sharpened visions and blurred emotions. Such was Iris; such has been Bayley. Every now and then the romantic and yet very earthly story of their early years and then marriage is interrupted with the present day reality of Iris terminal case of Alzheimer's disease. Interrupted, yes, but never disturbing. Bayley bravely relates the intrinsic features of living with Iris, as she slowly descended into memory oblivion, to her personal character traits as they became progressively apparent to him as they got used to each other. Getting used to it took a lot, as it happens with extraordinary minds that met each other in life. In great detail Bayley describes how apart they were during their marriage, and how much they both needed that apartness for their marriage to work properly. If you are looking for a detailed study of Iris Murdoch as a writer, with equally detailed account of her life, you might consider reading Peter Conradi's newest biography of the author. What that biography, or for that matter, any biography written by a stranger, will never give you, is a personal commentary on the internal life of the couple. Not surprisingly, there goes a saying that what other people do not know about your marriage is exactly what makes it yours. John Bayley raises the curtain a bit for us to see something we otherwise wouldn't have been able to see. And what we see is astonishingly consistent, albeit compact set of observations, recited in reserved tone. Let me only say that Bayley took a lot, accepted much, disregarded even more as a man, as a husband. Perhaps it takes a bird of a feather to flock together in a marriage like this? That I do not know, as much as I would like to, being an academic myself. Maybe just one discovers it for himself. In any case, being apart brought them close together, and that's what counts. A line from John Bayley is due here: "you can live with someone for years, and not feel in the least married".

"WHERE DO WE GO NOW?" "WHERE DO WE GO NOW?"

I have read many accounts of Alzheimer's disease, but I have never seen an account as personal and truthful as this one. Usually, out of respect for privacy, or lack of words in grief, those close to the victim give way to their grief and misery in writing, showing compassion and understanding, while avoiding the true nature of life with the victims. That of course is understandable and perhaps expected, therefore I was increasingly astonished of the direction Bayley took in his "Elegy for Iris". As much as words can describe our pain, our love, our compassion and all other feelings, there is nothing like the reality, if shown just as it is. That is what Bayley had done in this book. That is what makes it stand out. Speechless, I followed the events from their married life, as told by Bayley in an offhand tone. The book is divided into two parts, "Then" and "Now". While in the former the storyline of their life is seamlessly interlaced with the present morbid circumstances, the latter part is a diary, and where page-by-page we are struck with naturalistic account of the everyday struggle. It was as much Bayley's struggle as it was Iris's, if not more. Whereas the beginning of the terminal illness is a shock to all parties, it does bring a blessing in the long run in the form of oblivion. The more developed the case, the less the victim suffers as it is. I was touched by the author's graphic admission to anger, irritation and even rage. Graphic; not only because of the detailed description of the irritatingly recurring events, but also because of the portrayal of the corresponding emotions - I probably won't forget as the helpless husband saw his purple face in the mirror. His helplessness, anger and love - all of those thoroughly mixed, cemented together in those last months of Iris Murdoch's life. Their life in those times underwent a profound change, where their life's maxim was completely reversed in meaning. "Now I feel us fused together. It appalls me sometimes, but it also seems comforting, reassuring and normal." These are about the most sincere words that I have heard spoken. (...)

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Gem June 27, 2000

By Elizabeth Hendry VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This book is heartbreakingly beautiful. Bayley loved his wife, Iris Murdoch, so deeply, and on so many levels and that love comes across beautifully in this book. Bayley brings us into the intimate private world that he and Murdoch shared. As a longtime fan of Iris Murdoch, I am thankful for the insight into her life and her work. This book is very personal, so much so that I don't think it can be read in one sitting, but rather should be savoured slowly and deliberately. I remember the sadness I felt hearing that she had Altzheimer's and then hearing that she died. This book brings back that sadness, but it comes back stronger because it also brings John Bayley's sadness. That is not to say that this book is a "downer" on any level. Quite the contrary. John Bayley has constructed a beautiful book focused mainly on his love for his wife, and how the love between them grew, from his first sighting of her riding a bicycle to the time when he wrote this book, as she was suffering from the ravages of the disease.