My Name Escapes Me: Alec Guinness' Diary

I found a copy of _My Name Escapes Me:  The Diary of a Retiring Actor_ by Alec Guinness (NY:  Penguin Books, 1996  ISBN 0140277455) and, since I’d liked Guinness' autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, put it away in my book closet.  A few weeks ago, I took it out and read it, enjoying it as much if not more so than the previous book.  Guinness could write.  In fact, I discovered these three found poems which are very good imagistic works:

(page 75)  The fish lie low and still in the pond, covered by a layer of plate-glass ice.

(126)  Little blue scillas shaking violently in the cold wind, making the borders of garden paths look like running water.

(127)  The sea was driving for the shore with thousands of white horses riding over a pale grey-green surface.

And this following quote reminds me of something Gulley Jimson says in the movie version of "The Horse’s Mouth" which Guinness wrote, his only screenplay, and starred in:  

"'It’s my belief' I said, 'that if you took all the waiters’ boots off, their feet would make such rude remarks to the customers that nobody would be able to enjoy his dinner.’"

(8)  Will 1995 be the year of Universal Suing?  Policemen, I read, are resorting to the courts because of the state of their nerves after the horrid things they have seen at football matches;  and a lot of soldiers want compensation because they have discovered that war is beastly.

Guinness in his diary is continually thinking about winning the lottery, declares himself “not a star,” expresses annoyance at his “Star Wars”  notoriety, buys presents for his wife, and dines out often with friends and colleagues.  He listens to classical music from a wide range of composers and pays great attention to painting and painters.  He seems also to have been a committed Catholic, converting as an adult and taking his spiritual life seriously.

I’d always enjoyed Guiinness as an actor, in the great comedies as well as the dramatic roles and even thought he might have been a fine dancer, judging from a scene in “All at Sea” where he leads a conga line out of a seaside club with, believe it or not, Jackie Collins, Joan Collins’ sister.

I’ve found that there are at least two other books by him I can read, _A Positively Final Appearance_, a continuation of his diaries, and _A Commonplace Book_ which makes me like him more as these notes on the books I read are my own version of an electronic commonplace book.

When I think of Alec Guinness, I smile.  Now my smile is wider and my admiration deeper.

(3)  …rather embarrassing successes and expected failures.

(5)  Early in the war I had tea with him [the painter Tchelitchew] in New York;  very agreeable, and camply amusing, but I had the impression I was in the presence of a professional exile - something I often feel about Russians or eastern Europeans.

(57)  There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.

(96)  …. St Augustine, who quoted, with admiration, an old man he knew? - ‘Time comes from the future, which does not yet exist, into the present which has no duration, and goes in to the past, which has ceased to exist.’

(114)  Oh, if only we had written everything down daily [in a diary] we could bore the pants off everyone all the time with our exactitude.

(116)  When interviewed by the press he [Russian actor Alexei Gribov] gave a classic reply to the perennial question,’Which is your favorite of the parts you play?’  Gribov replied, sotto voce, “I can’t tell you that because, you see, it would make the other parts jealous.’  A very true observation.

(123)  Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of the Divine

(130)  My experience is that given time - and plenty of it - I can usually bring myself to forgive, quite genuinely, a personal injury, but I find it virtually impossible to forgive an injury to those I love.

(136)  Group-captain [Geoffrey Leonard] Cheshire, V. C.  [Cheshire Homes, Leonard Cheshire charityk] a man Alec Guinness thought would be considered a saint for his work supporting the disabled and on conflict resolution

… Then with tears in his [Nehru’s] eyes, he turned to an aide and said, ‘That is the greatest man I have met since Gandhi…"

(162)  Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 32 - for me the greatest piece of music I know