Not Entitled: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Frank Kermode (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

An autobiography by the eminent English literary critic traces his childhood on the Isle of Man, his work on ferryboats around Liverpool, his editorship of Encounter, and his embattled years at Cambridge University.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enchanting, episodic memoir, Kermode chronicles the unusual course of events that carried him from a parochial childhood on the Isle of Man to international recognition as a literary critic. A modest, at times dolefully confessional raconteur, Kermode elides most details about his marriages and children, focusing instead upon his own perpetual feelings of dislocation and his lack of "entitlement" to cultural and familial attainments. Raised in a world of tenements, gaslights and ancient prejudices, the sensitive Kermode joined the navy at the outset of WWII, serving as clerk to a series of "mad captains" (including two Sisyphian years in Iceland building a naval defense that was never completed). Kermode next drifted into graduate school, later teaching at Reading, Bristol and University College of London, eventually becoming King Edward VII Professor of English at Cambridge, a post he resigned during a much-publicized controversy over post-structuralism during the early 1980s. Kermode also details the flap over his editorship of the cultural journal Encounter, which he left on principle in 1967 when it was revealed to be CIA-funded. And, through a marvelous prism of literary and cultural observations, Kermode, whose most famous book is The Sense of an Ending, affectingly ponders his own sense of mortality.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Kermode, scholar, critic, and teacher of English literature for nearly 50 years, has written a perceptive autobiography that is dry in wit, sharp in detail, but oddly distanced from its subject. The work is thematically divided into three parts: the first section covers Kermode's childhood and youth on the British Isle of Man, a unique but circumscribed world from which he escaped via scholarship to Liverpool University in 1938. After only a few terms, war intervened, and Kermode enlisted in the Royal Navy. The second part, his life with "my mad captains" and others, is by far the best of the book and should be required reading for those who consider war glamorous or heroic. Kermode's academic career, professional life, and thoughts on the intellectual wars over critical methods form a final third. Although the earlier chapters are of general interest, the last part requires more interest in, and knowledge of, politics and personalities in English academia than most American readers may possess. A quirky and beautifully written work; for specialized collections.
-?Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 263 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374181039
• ISBN-13: 978-0374181031
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,471,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sir Frank Kermode has been a prominent figure in the world of literary criticism since the 1960s. He has been King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge and Professor of Poetry at Harvard. He was knighted in 1991.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A short, pithy and hilarious review of critic's life, August 15, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Not Entitled: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Kermode, who introduced the English-speaking world to French post-structuralist theory when he was teaching at the University of London, is far less interested in such effete and rarified (not to say, obtuse!) things than in relating his childhood, youth and early adulthood to the later course his life took. Born on the linguistically isolated island of Mann, his recollections of those early years suggested nothing of the extraordinary literary-critical future that awaited him. His service in the Royal Navy puts to rest the common conviction that anyone who served in that war must be a hero. On the contrary, he considered the whole outing a total waste of time (something that anyone who's served in the military will recogize as fundamentally correct!). A narrow measure of his prodigious critical output may be found in another AMAZON offering of Kermode's: _The Uses of Error_

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Modest Man, September 30, 2010

By 

Frances Haas "A close reader" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Not Entitled: A Memoir (Paperback)

I was not acquainted with the writing of Frank Kermode but read his obituary in the "Times" Magazine. After learning he had been born on the Isle of Man, yet held a foremost role as a major art critic and writer, I sent for his autobiography.
Because Mr. Kermondy was born on a small, isolated island, I assumed his sense of community would be developed, but his is an odder story than that. He never says so, but his mother was most likely illegitimate, and, so, he never found out any family background on her side of the family. It was "off limits" to ask, and he grew up with only his parents, his father being from Scotland. It is as if Kermody were isolated on an already isolated island. The voice of the book is lonely, but not self-pitying: ironic.
The author's adventures during the Second World War in the British Navy are down-to-earth and unsentimental. The title for the book: "Unentitled" comes from his seaman's experience. When a man went to the bursur's to be paid, he would lay his cap down. If he had received enough demerits that pay period, the bursur would call out, "Unentitled!" meaning the man had no salary at all. All the poor fellow could do, according to the author, was to salute smartly, pivot and leave, or he might just get another demerit.
I felt the author was disillusioned, but he does not easily give out his secrets, but delves into the lives of others. He has a certain impenetrable qualilty, which is not in evidence in his other books.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Memoir of an Honest Man(x), March 5, 2010

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Robert A. Watson (Berlin, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Not Entitled: A Memoir (Paperback)

Kermode is one of the rare scholar-critics of our time whose analytical brilliance has not obscured from him his own humanity. This memoir, along with--or perhaps heading the list of--his distinguished titles, The Sense of an Ending, The Genesis of Secrecy, Shakespeare's Language, and many more, guarantees his place in the canon of classics chosen by those who read for pleasure.