Life writing

A well-known and perhaps apt passage from Tristram Shandy, which I'm teaching later this afternoon:

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume—and no farther than to my first day’s life—‘tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—And why not?—and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description—And for what reason should they be cut short? As at this rate I should just live 364 times faster than I should write—It must follow, an’ please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read.

The Pamela Widmerpool of Central Europe

I think there is no chance I am actually going to read this multi-volume Mahler biography, reviewed by Hugh Wood at the TLS, but I am tickled by Wood's description of the relationship between subject and digression:

[T]his is not just a biography: it is more of a Mahler-Lexicon, almost a history of the age. De La Grange has found himself irresistibly drawn down every avenue that offers itself, and his interests are wide. By the time one has read through all thirty-three of the Appendices, and has discovered in the last one the recipe for Mahler’s favourite dessert (Marillonknödel – and it sounds delicious), one feels not only triumphant but replete.