The Gatekeeper: A Memoir [Paperback]

Terry Eagleton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2003

Often scathingly funny, frequently tender, and always completely engaging, The Gatekeeper is Terry Eagleton's memoirs, his deep-etched portraits of those who influenced him, either by example or by contrast: his father, headmasters, priests, and Cambridge dons. He was a shy, bookish, asthmatic boy keenly aware of social inferiority yet determined to make his intellectual way. The Gatekeeper mixes the soberly serious with the downright hilarious, skewer-sharp satire with unashamed fondness, the personal with the political. Most of it all it reveals a young man learning to reconcile oppositions: a double-edged portrait of the intellectual as a young man.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eagleton (The Truth About the Irish) has never been shy about expressing sharp, penetrating opinions. In this entertaining memoir of his childhood and intellectual development, Eagleton lives up to both sides of his reputation, coming off as both an astute social critic and a sharp-tongued cad. He expounds on his Cambridge adviser ("his role as a teacher was to relieve me of my ideas"), Mormons ("It was their lethal American blandness which proved hardest to take") and his Young Socialist cadre ("At one point in the group's career, venereal infections were circulating almost as rapidly as theories of neo-colonialism"). Clearly, Eagleton can be snide. But he can also be profound. He writes seriously and convincingly about Oscar Wilde, Wittgenstein, working-class intellectuals, Catholicism and liberal politics. Eagleton fiercely defends the radical left's ambitions and offers sharp critiques of globalization and the apparent triumph of capitalism. But he recognizes socialist failings his description of a typical leftist conference will elicit howls of laughter from those who have attended similar events. On his religious upbringing, Eagleton is even more damning. As an altar boy, he served as the "gatekeeper" in a convent whose nuns were never allowed to go outside or see a man. Later, he attended a seminary, which introduced him to the problems that have lately plagued the Church (how do you separate the boys from the men in a Catholic school? "[W]ith a crowbar," writes Eagleton). In little more than a hundred pages, Eagleton manages to be lewd, irritating, solemn and idealistic, all at the same time.--ith a crowbar," writes Eagleton). In little more than a hundred pages, Eagleton manages to be lewd, irritating, solemn and idealistic, all at the same time.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

When celebrated literary critics reach retirement, they produce memoirs. These are often revelations about the academy's insides or classic coming-of-age tales about a poor lout's triumph over humble beginnings to reach the life of the mind. Eagleton's almost egregiously witty and amusing memoir is of the latter kind. His story chronicles the ascent of an Irish Catholic working-class boy to Oxbridge and international recognition as the author of classic studies such as Literary Theory and Aesthetic Ideology. The book differs from others in the genre, such as Sir Frank Kermode's Not Entitled and Marcel Reich-Ranicki's The Author of Himself in that Eagleton unflinchingly displays the sharp teeth with which he bit quite a few hands that fed him along the way. As a prominent Marxist critic, Eagleton has proved a matchless debunker of the shortcomings of trendy literary theory. As a memoirist, he is equally merciless about the admittedly ludicrous characters encountered in his life. But even in this personal recollection of petty power play in the church and the academy, the eloquent Marxist privileges analysis over genuine insight into himself or others. Missing from this book is Eagleton the human being, the man behind his clever words. Recommended for academic libraries and large public libraries. Ulrich Baer, NYU
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (June 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312316135
• ISBN-13: 978-0312316136
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Engagingly told, yet detached and oblique, September 25, 2003

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John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (Paperback)

Eagleton's recent work finds him claiming the "professional Irishman" mantle, first in literary investigations, then satirical observations directed towards his once-removed, newly reclaimed homeland in "The Truth About the Irish," and now in this rather unrevealing memoir. True to the Hibernian stereotype, he talks your ear off for hours yet you come away dazzled by his wit...only realizing after your "intimate" conversation how little you've actually learned from your nimbly eloquent and now fleeting acquaintance.

I found his opening two chapters on Irish Catholicism the best, in which he balances fault-finding with sensitivity and compassion. His chapters on far-left politics and "losers" reveal not so much his own intellectual and political thoughts as his take on the wider community of thinkers, posers, and activists in all their idealism and philistinism both.

His mentor at Oxford proves in his student's eyes repelling and appealing, but the whole dislocation I presume Eagleton felt at Oxford here becomes refracted into some Wildean scene that, not having had the privileges Eagleton earned, I could not fully share. His recollections on the page seemed angled at those within the charmed circle, as those in the leftist campaigning, and if you're removed at a distance as I am, the detachment only grew as I read his entertaining but--in these latter sections--ultimately disengaged recollections.

Still, as with his literary and satirical work (seek out his novella "Saints and Sinners"), Eagleton's worth reading, for the energy of his mind and the enthusiasm of his intellect. You won't find much about his personal side here, but he does deliver what he wishes to share on the page, frankly and tersely.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humour with a Point, August 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (Paperback)

Eagleton has long been a major and uncompromising thinker. But, just as much, he is also an excellent writer. This is a good book to read as a 'refresher' if you have read other books by Eagleton, and a good book to begin with if you have not. You might or might not always agree with Eagleton, but he will make you think, laugh and, if you are honest with yourself, perhaps rethink some of your convictions. Above all, he is one of those very few important thinkers whose intricate thinking does not plough their prose into turgidity.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant in places, October 3, 2007

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another reader - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (Paperback)

Eagleton's lengthy chapter on the Labour movement in Britain, although it does have touches of brilliant satire, is unlikely to be of as much interest to American readers as some of his other chapters in which he discusses Catholics in England or the anthropology of Oxbridge, for example. At his best, Eagleton is both funny and sharply insightful. And it is worth wading through the longueurs to find these places.