... from Theo, the Foreword
Writing about one's own life is surely one of the more dangerous undertakings. Remembrance has an infernal habit of slipping into misremembrance; actuality and dreams become entangled, and fiction often enough repeated turns into an assertion of fact.
Theatre people are especially vulnerable to such temptations; most careers as told and retold to press and public are given a cosmetic layer -- God forbid any warts should show. Sometimes even genuine attempts at honesty are thwarted by a lifelong habit of blowing one's own trumpet.
A theatrical producer, so the story goes, had a terrible flop on his hands. He went to the theatre one evening, counted the house, and stood outside under the marquee, shaking his head dejectedly. Seven paying customers: a disaster! A friend walked by and inquired, "How's your show doing?" The producer, attempting an honest admission of failure, said, "Not good, not good. Small audience -- eleven people." If my unconscious should play tricks of this kind that I am unable to detect or prevent, I hereby apologize in advance.
Plato quotes Socrates as saying: "The unexamined life is not worth living." I have, from time to time, been accused by my family of living an unexamined life. In truth, I have always felt, rightly or wrongly, that my life was worth living, whether examined or not. I have admittedly not been eager to subject myself to a self-examination, possibly for fear that the shortcomings I would find might overwhelm any sense of worth I have about myself. Now I suppose I must take that look and chance a possible endangerment to my inner equilibrium.
Most people lead two distinct lives -- a private life and a public one. Others lead multiple lives; I am one of those. Professionally I can count three or four separate existences, politically three or four more. Add the personal aspects and altogether they add up to a cat's count of nine. Among them I play no favorites, and for the most part I've managed not to be overwhelmed by their number or by their demands for different kinds of attention and different aptitudes.
I have dealt with them by compartmentalizing. Each of the lives, as I live it, I treat as though it were the only life I have. Yet in some way each in turn has served to inform other facets of me. In this book I have tried to open each one to see if they hang together. In the process I often abandon strict chronology, letting the themes be my guide rather than the calendar. Bear with me.