Elegy for Iris

Rating:
Summary: a love story?
Review: I found Bayley a scary sort of person. His instantaneous love for the homely and pecular Iris was just weird. His stalking of her, his reiterated joy at their apartness, his devotional care of her and their home, his acceptance of her life void of meaningful dialogue made me question her love of him. "If this be love..."

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful history of a couple...
Review: I initially purchased this book after seeing it at a local bookstore. It's anecdotes about Oxford sparked my interest as a former student. Once I began reading the book, I was simply captivated by it's quiet charm. This book is not a page turner, so the reader must be willing to stick with it. There are certain passages in the book when Bayley is poetic in his descriptions of times he and Iris shared. One need not have read any of Ms. Murdoch's books to enjoy this story. A very good read.

Rating:
Summary: A huge disappointment
Review: I learned more than I wanted to know about Iris Murdoch, her pathetic doting husband, and their unenviable union. The dislike I developed of these characters has tainted my vision of Dame Murdoch's novels.

Rating:
Summary: A Memorable reading experience!
Review: I read Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, (which won the 1978 Booker Prize) on Dec 4, 1983, and her Under the Net (which was no. 95 on the Modern Library panel's list of the 100 greatest novels written in English in the 20th century) and was under-enthralled with both. So I wa not expecting much when I undertook to read her husband's memoir of his life with her (written during the last days of her life, she having died Feb. 8, 1999), especially since I could not believe it would be great to read about someone having Alzheimer's and of caring for such a person. I was very pleasantly surprised. Bayley's memoir is great reading, full of interesting information as well as a thoughtful and truthful-sounding account of their life as husband and wife. Illustrative of the former, on page 118 we learn that Aldous Huxley believed that Piero della Francesca's Resurrection was "the greatest painting in the world" (and it is great to go to the computer and see the painting!) and on page 164 et seq. we have a very uncomplimentary account of the 1981 Nobel-prize-winner Elias Canetti (his name is never mentioned, but there can be no doubt of his identity since the computer will tell those of us who did not know that Canetti is the author of Die Blendung). We have mention of Montague Rhodes James (and can go to the computer to read his some of his ghost stories, including "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", the story referred to by name in this memoir). Since Bayley is an eminent literary critic (as the jacket describes him) the book abounds with interesting tidbits such as this, and almost persuades me I should read another Murdoch book! I found this book a great reading experience.

Rating:
Summary: Fine Portrait of an Unusual Pairing
Review: I was somewhat reluctant to read this book as I knew that Iris Murdoch had suffered from Alzheimer's in her final years and the disease is not exactly uplifting subject matter. However, I had read good things about the book. Am I ever glad I took the plunge. What I found was a thoroughly enjoyable memoir and portrait of an unusual marriage between two people who, although unconventional, were completely devoted to each other. If anyone can solve the mystery of "stifaclo" the dish that Iris prepares, I'd love to know what it is!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully rambling
Review: I've spent the last 3-4 years writing a memoir (Baby Catcher). Therefore, I'm immersing myself in creative NF and memoir, and this is one of the best. Only a consummate writer such as John Bailey could have pulled this off. I've heard others complain about his rambling style, meandering between distant past, near past, and present (and I haven't seen the movie yet), but I found the transitions seamless and the flow of time as effortless as thought itself. Bailey shows all phases of the caretaking of someone with late-stage Alzheimers, regret, humor, irritation, rage, impatience, love, silliness... Would that each of us be accompanied on our trip to life's end - however it may present itself - by someone similarly compassionate. And articulate. May John Bailey himself be equally eulogized.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Sad
Review: If you've lost a loved one to dementia, whether caused by Alzheimer's or strokes, you know that this dreadful change in your life can be--as a woman in Elegy for Iris notes so terribly--like "being chained to a corpse." You may feel you exist in a perpetual state of mourning, and release seems impossibly distant since the process of degeneration can last for a decade, fifteen years, or more.

Four years ago before this book was published, Alzheimer's began to chip away at acclaimed novelist Iris Murdoch and she started to lose memories, associations and connection with herself. Her husband of forty years, English critic John Bayley, has written a memoir about this escalating series of losses that is imbued with admiration, love, and gentle humor. Bayley compellingly interweaves descriptions of his wife's sad deterioration with stories of their courtship and long, contented marriage. What is remarkable about this narrative (which needed better editing, however), is that despite the very real tragedy of Alzheimer's, he is not bitter or self-pitying, and what links him and his wife now is anything but a chain.

Murdoch and Bayley seem to have given each other the freedom to live complete lives, however they needed to, and that freedom was a profound tie. "We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness each saw and was aware of in the other," he observes. And tracing their growing love for one another, he makes one envy the balance they found between separateness and companionship (which counterpoints their domestic squalor). From the earliest days onward, marriage and solitude were not contradictions for them. They could "be closely and physically entwined, and yet feel solitude's friendly presence, as warm and undesolating as contiguity itself."

All that reverberates strangely with the ways in which Murdoch now is shut off from him far more than she ever was as a creative artist, but seems to need the constant reassurance of his presence. She is like a child hungry for attention, but unable to communicate clearly, and sometimes needs to be gently shooed away so that he can have time to himself. Yet she returns, anxious, needful. Sometimes her confusions drive him into a rage, but she often responds to these outbursts with the same ameliorative calm she always had.

Given their long, happy marriage, Bayley and Murdoch's first meetings were comically inauspicious. In his late twenties and a graduate student teaching at Oxford after World War II, Bailey spied Murdoch bicycling past one day looking grumpy, grim, and not entirely attractive. Yet for Bailey, she was almost an apparition, a woman existing only in the moment--and for him alone. But his instantaneous fantasies were soon crushed when he met her at a party and realized she was merely another teacher. How ordinary! Worse still, she was clearly a popular and magnetic woman with many friends (and not a few lovers, he would learn). Though he tried, he never managed to make conversation with her that night, and when his next opportunity came at a dinner, he was daunted by the seriousness with which this philosophy teacher considered his most casual remarks.

On their first date he was oddly shocked by her brilliant red brocade dress which struck him as inappropriate for her, and she managed to fall down stairs as they entered a ball. But not much later they were laughing and sharing childhood confidences, and it's thanks to their childlike joy that the bonds between them were first knit, lasting even into her Alzheimer's. Rather miraculously, humor survives between them, even now that her memory has faded, leaving her incapable of finishing sentences and often lost in a state of "vacant despair." Bayley can still make Murdoch smile with silly jokes and rhymes. There's so much love (and quiet suffering) in Bayley's observation that a smile "transforms her face, bringing it back to what it was, and with an added glow that seems supernatural."

Murdoch's kindness, her affability, her lack of egotism about her career make for odd continuity with the generally sweet-natured woman she is under the spell of Alzheimer's, and Bayley's deep appreciation of these excellent qualities seems to undergird his current devotion. Time and again, the author makes the best of a bitter situation, and even finds aspects of it enjoyable. He manages, for instance, to find something delightful in regularly watching the British children's show "Teletubbies" with her. But all his fond memories and his loving attention to her in the present cannot veil the especial cruelty of watching a sharp-minded and fertile novelist "sail into the darkness," as Murdoch puts it herself in a moment of lucidity.

Among various literary subjects, Bayley has written about Henry James, and Elegy for Iris richly and warmly demonstrates a truth affirmed by a character in James's The Ambassadors: "The only safe thing is to give--it's what plays you least false."

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Sad
Review: If you've lost a loved one to dementia, whether caused by Alzheimer's or strokes, you know that this dreadful change in your life can be--as a woman in Elegy for Iris notes so terribly--like "being chained to a corpse." You may feel you exist in a perpetual state of mourning, and release seems impossibly distant since the process of degeneration can last for a decade, fifteen years, or more.

Four years ago before this book was published, Alzheimer's began to chip away at acclaimed novelist Iris Murdoch and she started to lose memories, associations and connection with herself. Her husband of forty years, English critic John Bayley, has written a memoir about this escalating series of losses that is imbued with admiration, love, and gentle humor. Bayley compellingly interweaves descriptions of his wife's sad deterioration with stories of their courtship and long, contented marriage. What is remarkable about this narrative (which needed better editing, however), is that despite the very real tragedy of Alzheimer's, he is not bitter or self-pitying, and what links him and his wife now is anything but a chain.

Murdoch and Bayley seem to have given each other the freedom to live complete lives, however they needed to, and that freedom was a profound tie. "We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness each saw and was aware of in the other," he observes. And tracing their growing love for one another, he makes one envy the balance they found between separateness and companionship (which counterpoints their domestic squalor). From the earliest days onward, marriage and solitude were not contradictions for them. They could "be closely and physically entwined, and yet feel solitude's friendly presence, as warm and undesolating as contiguity itself."

All that reverberates strangely with the ways in which Murdoch now is shut off from him far more than she ever was as a creative artist, but seems to need the constant reassurance of his presence. She is like a child hungry for attention, but unable to communicate clearly, and sometimes needs to be gently shooed away so that he can have time to himself. Yet she returns, anxious, needful. Sometimes her confusions drive him into a rage, but she often responds to these outbursts with the same ameliorative calm she always had.

Given their long, happy marriage, Bayley and Murdoch's first meetings were comically inauspicious. In his late twenties and a graduate student teaching at Oxford after World War II, Bailey spied Murdoch bicycling past one day looking grumpy, grim, and not entirely attractive. Yet for Bailey, she was almost an apparition, a woman existing only in the moment--and for him alone. But his instantaneous fantasies were soon crushed when he met her at a party and realized she was merely another teacher. How ordinary! Worse still, she was clearly a popular and magnetic woman with many friends (and not a few lovers, he would learn). Though he tried, he never managed to make conversation with her that night, and when his next opportunity came at a dinner, he was daunted by the seriousness with which this philosophy teacher considered his most casual remarks.

On their first date he was oddly shocked by her brilliant red brocade dress which struck him as inappropriate for her, and she managed to fall down stairs as they entered a ball. But not much later they were laughing and sharing childhood confidences, and it's thanks to their childlike joy that the bonds between them were first knit, lasting even into her Alzheimer's. Rather miraculously, humor survives between them, even now that her memory has faded, leaving her incapable of finishing sentences and often lost in a state of "vacant despair." Bayley can still make Murdoch smile with silly jokes and rhymes. There's so much love (and quiet suffering) in Bayley's observation that a smile "transforms her face, bringing it back to what it was, and with an added glow that seems supernatural."

Murdoch's kindness, her affability, her lack of egotism about her career make for odd continuity with the generally sweet-natured woman she is under the spell of Alzheimer's, and Bayley's deep appreciation of these excellent qualities seems to undergird his current devotion. Time and again, the author makes the best of a bitter situation, and even finds aspects of it enjoyable. He manages, for instance, to find something delightful in regularly watching the British children's show "Teletubbies" with her. But all his fond memories and his loving attention to her in the present cannot veil the especial cruelty of watching a sharp-minded and fertile novelist "sail into the darkness," as Murdoch puts it herself in a moment of lucidity.

Among various literary subjects, Bayley has written about Henry James, and Elegy for Iris richly and warmly demonstrates a truth affirmed by a character in James's The Ambassadors: "The only safe thing is to give--it's what plays you least false."

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery.

Rating:
Summary: A book that forever alters our concepts of illness and love
Review: In October 1997 when I visited John Bayley and Iris Murdoch in England, I was stunned by the extraordinary and tender way in which John was taking care of his wife of over 40 years. I had never seen such faith and devotion, and the scene reminded me of a love story out of classical mythology. Here was Iris Murdoch, one of the most brilliant writers of her generation, unable to recall her husband's name much less know who this American visitor was; yet while I was immensely saddened by her condition, I was also struck by the joy in the Bayley household; for Iris, despite the loss of her legendary mental faculties, radiated a manifest bliss and spiritual beauty which was only heightened by the devotion of her husband. She had not been placed in a "home" where so many Alzheimer's patients must go when the burdens become simply too great for their families. In fact, Iris joined us for lunch that Sunday on the banks of a picturesque river in Oxford. Neither John nor this American editor regarded her condition as one of the "ghastlier ironies" of literary history; for we recognized that illness, alas, like childhood or old age, was a natural part of the life cycle, and that sickness should not be hidden from view (John Bayley, ever the disciple of Tolstoy, strongly believed that he should not be embarrassed by Iris's condition). And so ELEGY FOR IRIS was commissioned that day, and it is a book that reflects these thoughts and this philosophy. It is a profound work of love that aspires not only to tell Iris's story but also to redefine the way we perceive marriage and sickness. John Bayley then serves as a selfless model, a heroic figure, for us all. Let us hope that we will have mates as loving and compasionate as this gentle English muse.

Rating:
Summary: A love letter from a husband about his wife.
Review: Jim Broadbent ("Topsy-Turvy," "Moulin Rouge") brought home Oscar gold for his role of John Bayley in the movie "Iris."

With the film (also starring Dame Judi Dench in the title role, and "Titanic" star Kate Winslet playing a younger version) now available for rental, it's a good time to also check out the book upon which the movie is based.

"Elegy for Iris" is Bayley's heart-rending memoir of his wife, celebrated novelist Iris Murdoch ("A Severed Head" and "The Bell" among them). It is the story of Bayley and Murdoch's romance, from their first meeting and the bookish Bayley's instant attraction to the girl on a bicycle.

Love seemed to bloom almost immediately, despite Bayley's lack of experience and Murdoch's plethora of suitors. In fact, Bayley tells us that years later he happened upon Murdoch's note for their first date: "St. Antony's Dance. Fell down the steps, and seem to have fallen in love with J. We didn't dance much."

At the same time, "Elegy" is also a tale of the modern John and Iris, as the celebrated novelist suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and her husband watches as her once brilliant mind falters.

But while the book will bring tears, it isn't really a tearjerker.

Bayley shares some of the personal, silly little jokes he tells Iris that at one time would not really have amused either of them, but which draw a favorable reaction from her now. And the way that one of his exasperated temper tantrums settles her nerves now more than coddling will.

While Bayley is at times frustrated, understandably so, he seems more enamored of his wife then ever. He marvels at the things she does, reflects on their shared past, they way her mind worked then contrasted with the way it worked as he wrote "Elegy" (Murdoch died in February).

At no time does Bayley seem to resent being saddled with his wife. In fact, he expresses distaste for the wife of another Alzheimer's patient when she comments that it is "like being chained to a corpse, isn't it?"

No, declares Bayley, and he goes to bat for his wife.

"I was repelled by the suggestion that Iris' affliction could have anything in common with that of this jolly woman's husband. She was a heroine, no doubt, but let her be a heroine in her own style. How could our cases be compared? Iris was Iris."

So says a testament to quiet strength, bravery and love.