With Love and Rage: A Friendship with Iris Murdoch - Softcover

David Morgan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1899999426 ISBN 13: 9781899999422

Publisher: Kingston University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This memoir is both David Morgan's final farewell to Iris Murdoch and his loving preservation of her memory. They met while he was studying at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1960s when, he says, something clicked . It was an unlikely alliance: he was a rebel from Birmingham who had been hospitalized against his will at 17 and was now a fierce autodidact; she was a famous writer who had come to London as grandee from Oxford to teach philosophy to a wilder bunch of students than she had ever encountered before. But their friendship was to endure for more than thirty years. A deep mutual affection transcended both the liberties and confines that the 1960s imposed on them: they loved art, literature and words; she was seduced by his charm, touched by his vulnerability, and encouraged the best in him; he was flattered by her attention, intrigued by her brilliance, and relished her fascination for him. This painful, funny and irreverent account of their friendship vacillates between disrespect and homage, between hilarity and tears, and between love and rage on both sides. It is not only a story about two remarkable individuals; it is about the bohemian London of the 1960s, and also a story about how art is made. For Morgan's reminiscences covertly reveal how far Murdoch was aware that her most intimate relationships would inevitably inform her art. When linked with her novels they provide a unique insight into how she wrought it out of truthful human experience without betraying those she loved. Interest in revelations about the life of any writer can only be justified by the light they shed on art and its creators and this fresh invitation into the hidden recesses of Iris Murdoch's life will enable a better insight into the writer herself, her novels and, most importantly, the mind that shaped them.

About this title

About the Author

David Morgan left school in Birmingham without qualifications and spent six years educating himself. Getting into the RCA, where in 1964 he met Iris Murdoch, proved to him that he couldn't paint but that maybe he could write and teach, and encouraged by her, he ended up running part-time studies at a London university. Like many auto-didacts he has a 'quiz' knowledge of the world with many gaps, but would have had even more if he hadn t met her. His debt to her is that she convinced him he had a mind.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kingston University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1899999426
• ISBN 13: 9781899999422
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176