The Gatekeeper

A Memoir

Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book The Gatekeeper by Terry Eagleton, St. Martin's Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Terry Eagleton ISBN: 9781466852440
Publisher: St. Martin's Press Publication: September 10, 2013
Imprint: St. Martin's Press Language: English
Author: Terry Eagleton
ISBN: 9781466852440
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication: September 10, 2013
Imprint: St. Martin's Press
Language: English

Oxford professor, best-selling author, preeminent literary critic, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Terry Eagleton knows all about the claims of competing worlds. One of his earliest roles growing up Catholic in Protestant England was as "the gatekeeper"-the altar boy who at reverend mother's nod literally closed the door on young women taking the veil, separating the sanctity of the convent from earthly temptations and family obligations.

Often scathingly funny, frequently tender, and always completely engaging, The Gatekeeper is 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. "Our aim in life," he writes of his working-class, Irish-immigrant-descended family, "was to have the words 'We Were No Trouble' inscribed on our tombstones." But Eagleton knew trouble was the point of it all. Opening doors sometimes meant rattling the knobs. At both Cambridge and Oxford, he gravitated toward dialectics and mavericks, countering braying effeteness with withering if dogmatic dissections of the class system.

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 differences and oppositions: a double-edged portrait of the intellectual as a young man.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Oxford professor, best-selling author, preeminent literary critic, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Terry Eagleton knows all about the claims of competing worlds. One of his earliest roles growing up Catholic in Protestant England was as "the gatekeeper"-the altar boy who at reverend mother's nod literally closed the door on young women taking the veil, separating the sanctity of the convent from earthly temptations and family obligations.

Often scathingly funny, frequently tender, and always completely engaging, The Gatekeeper is 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. "Our aim in life," he writes of his working-class, Irish-immigrant-descended family, "was to have the words 'We Were No Trouble' inscribed on our tombstones." But Eagleton knew trouble was the point of it all. Opening doors sometimes meant rattling the knobs. At both Cambridge and Oxford, he gravitated toward dialectics and mavericks, countering braying effeteness with withering if dogmatic dissections of the class system.

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 differences and oppositions: a double-edged portrait of the intellectual as a young man.

More books from St. Martin's Press

Cover of the book Piano Lessons by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Reef Dance by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Fine, I'll Go Online! by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Nearer Home by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book The First Lie by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Any Rich Man Will Do by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Molly Murphy Series, Books 1-15 by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book The Haunted Abbot by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Frankly Pregnant by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book This Is the Way the World Ends by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Are Numbers Real? by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Future Jihad by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Wallflower Most Wanted by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Funny Faces Charlie Monkey Large by Terry Eagleton
Cover of the book Enigma by Terry Eagleton
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy