An Autobiography And Letters

How do life experiences feed into the books that an author writes? In An Autobiographical Letter, Norman Weeks recounts the experiential origins of his writings. Looking back over his first fifty years, he presents a comprehensive treatment of his life, especially those aspects that proved source material for what he would eventually write: His upbringing, education, maturation, personal interactions with friends and lovers, adventures and misadventures, travels and travails. A rich life, a rich lode for literary mining. The principal theme of An Autobiographical Letter, a literary biography, is the pursuit of personal vocation. We follow the thought processes of an author-at-work, as he reports on his various literary projects, -their roots, the subjects and their treatment, the difficulties of composition, the relation of form to content, revisions and new versions in the pursuit of perfection, and, at last, attempts to market the finished books. In all, a self-revelation and an exegesis of the author's works