The New Confessions [Hardcover]

William Boyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1988

"The New Confessions" is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. 'An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction...John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that begins in genteel Edinburgh, devastatingly detours out to the Western Front, forks off, after a period of cosy family life in London, to the electric excitements of the Berlin film-world of the Twenties, then moves on to Hollywood...to ordeal by McCarthyism and eventual escape to Europe' - Peter Kemp, "Observer".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

John James Todd, the tenacious, reflective, wise, ambitious, romantic filmmaker and adventurer who is the narrator of Boyd's (A Good Man in Africa, An Ice Cream War) fourth novel, is not a real personexcept that Boyd delightfully makes him so in this ribald "autobiography" based in spirit on Rousseau's Confessions, that posthumously published "enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete will have no imitator." Looking back on his life from a villa on the French Riviera in 1972, the Scottish Todd (born in 1899 to a mother wholike Rousseau'sdied at the moment of his birth) recalls events from his Edinburgh childhood and through the 1950s. He is introduced to the Confessions while a prisoner of war during WW I (the guard who procures it for him is a German actor and they remain friends) and its themes continue to haunt him. Todd is variously a doorman in Berlin in the '20s; a celebrated filmmaker in that city; a failed filmmaker of westerns once silent movies disappear; a foreign correspondent for several of the most unimportant newspapers west of the Mississippi during WW II; and a blacklisted filmmaker in Hollywood in the '50s. He fathers four children but is not a family man. Todd's greatest achievement is a technically adventurous, five-hour version of the first part of Rousseau's autobiography, starring Karl-Heinz Kornfield, his former guard. As Todd describes his work on this silent film, we become convinced that we have seen it; his other films are similarly vivid. So too are Todd himself and his lovers, friends and enemies. (Like Rousseau, he is unsparing in exposing his own flaws, and sometimes his callousness is chilling.) Todd's eloquent philosophic asides on how chance and circumstance, rather than simply will, shape an individual's destiny, reflect the masterful way Boyd allows Todd to tell his magnificent story. For while he gives his imagination free reign, the author exerts an impressive control, shaping the anecdotes for deeper understanding of Todd's character. $75,000 ad/promo; BOMC featured alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

$18.95. f Early in life John James Todd, forgotten hero of the cinematic avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, is advised, "Make your own rut. It's the only way." Throughout a long and tempestuous life, Todd remains true to his artistic vision, from his first movies of the Great War to the last B-westerns 30 years later. The capstone of his career is a five-hour, three-screen version of Rousseau's Confessions ; it appears just as talkies arrive on the scene, eliminating the audience for his one undiluted masterpiece. Vain and impulsive, undisciplined in all save his work, Todd is spiritual heir to his beloved JeanJacques. Better than either the prize-winning A Good Man in Africa ( LJ 5/1/82) or An Ice Cream War ( LJ 4/15/83), this novel shows Boyd's considerable ability as storyteller and the rich comic sense that infuses his work with life. David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 476 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (May 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688077617
• ISBN-13: 978-0688077617
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,618,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another sweeping saga by Boyd fully entertains.., September 18, 2005

By 

lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Confessions (Mass Market Paperback)

William Boyd is a terrific storyteller. His prose is of high quality, characterizations livid and entertaining. I'm glad to say 'The New Confessions' is standard William Boyd material. It is a faux autobiography of a Scotsman as he reminisces through his full life of the first three quarters of the twentieth century. He experiences the horror of trench warfare in WW I, he becomes a famous silent film director of the Germany avant-garde cinema, and then lives several years in turbulent Hollywood before retiring on an island in the Mediterranian. He is no hero, and not a particularly nice guy. But is life story is very rich; I wish I had a grandfather like him!

However 'The New Confessions is not perfect. The ending is a bit of a disappointment, and overall the book seems too much like his 'Any Human Heart' (..which he wrote later but I read earlier). I do wish William Boyd would return to the stellar form he demonstrated with 'Brazzaville Beach', a less ambitious but much more powerful novel.


Bottom line: thoroughly competent but Boyd can do better. Still, any average effort by Boyd is worthy read.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely destined to be a classic!, October 18, 2000

By 

Bea Quinn (Manila, Philippines) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Confessions (Paperback)

For the life of me, I will never ever forget the first and last sentences of this book, the slightly-damaged hardbound edition of which I bought for only a dollar(!) in a discount section of a bookstore here in Manila in 1994! A rare, serendipitous literary find for me, indeed. Truly captivating, a biography like this of one John James Todd can only be created by one destined to be a world literary giant. Medicine, Mathematics, Philosophy, 20th Century History, Cinema -- all combined and meticulously woven in one great book of insights. It is as if every turn of a page of this book, a hologram appears and all you have to do is watch, laugh and weep as the 3-Dimensional events happen grandly, clearly, colorfully and ceaselessly before your very eyes.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Fictional Memoir, December 24, 2003

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Confessions (Paperback)

This fictional memoir displays Boyd's consummate skill and style to full effect, ranging across time an place to create a vivid tale. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is (perhaps arguably) first tell-all memoir, and here Boyd updates it through the reminisces of James Todd. The story unfolds chronologically from his birth in 1899 and upbringing in Edinburgh to the 1970s, when he sits incognito on a quiet island writing his memoirs. The years between are a picaresque journey through the first half of the last century and one man's attempt to create meaning in his life.

The early years in his domineering father's household document an unhappy child yearning for love and approval. His father's quest to perfect and patent medicines provides an uncommonly interesting background for this. When a family friend introduces him to photography, the die is cast. As a teenager, like so many British men of his age, he is swallowed by the first World War, where he is wounded at Ypres. Here, Boyd's descriptions manage to breath fresh life into carnage whose horror has been well-documented. Fortuitously, he is then transferred to a propaganda unit, where his talent in photography is applied to the new realm of film. Captured by the Germans, he languishes in prison, where a guard befriends him and gives him a copy of Rousseau's Confessions to pass the time. The work insinuates itself into him, and it percolates in him in the postwar years as he works in the London silent film industry. Despite marrying and fathering several children, his ambitions remain thwarted and he moves to Berlin to pursue his pet project of making an epic version of Rousseau's book.

In Weimar Berlin he embraces the vibrant (if pfenningless) art community and reconnects with his former guard, who is now an actor. Working together, and with Armenian producers, their careers start to take off and Todd becomes embroiled in a lifelong love affair with an actress. Boyd's description of the inter-war Berlin film scene is so vivid, and the discussion of Todd's career so convincing that one is tempted to put the book down and rush to the video store to see his films. With the juice to get his pet Rousseau project made, Todd throws himself full-tilt into the project, only to see the emergence of "talkies" scuttle it. This propels him to Hollywood, where makes some quiet B-Westerns embedded with subtle social messages until t he next war finds him scrambling around as a war correspondent for third-tier U.S. newspapers.

Following WWII, he falls afoul of the McCarthy witch hunts for communist in the entertainment industry and appears before HUAC. Here, is perhaps the book's one flaw. The HUAC hearings provide Todd with an opportunity to both stay afloat by naming names (some of whom have already named him), and exact revenge on his longtime archnemesis-but he doesn't take it. Although he's presented as variously idealistic and honorable, it's the one time in the book where the character doesn't hold true. And from here, the book bogs down a little, as Todd's current situation as apparent exile starts to loom over the proceedings. Despite a somewhat unsatisiying ending, the story's overall quality is head and shoulders above the pack. Once again Boyd has researched a plethora of subjects and places, and recreates them perfectly. At the same time he occasionally deploys a light comic touch to lighten this story of the search for meaning and the role of chance in life.