A Life in Progress
CONRAD BLACK HAS LONG BEEN AN object of fascination and controversy in Canada and is increasingly becoming one at an international level. His autobiography, A Life In Progress, is brutally blunt, verbally brilliant, witheringly incisive and, at times, unattractively self - revealing. It is the work...
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| Published in: | Canadian Business 1993, Vol.66 (11), p.98 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Review |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | CONRAD BLACK HAS LONG BEEN AN object of fascination and controversy in Canada and is increasingly becoming one at an international level. His autobiography, A Life In Progress, is brutally blunt, verbally brilliant, witheringly incisive and, at times, unattractively self - revealing. It is the work of a man who rejoices in the intellectual and financial status of not giving a damn, of living a kind of Basil Fawlty wet dream in which Basil has not only won the football pools but has also swallowed a thesaurus and somehow acquired another 50 points of IQ. Now he can tell people what he really thinks of them. Many of Black's references come from warfare and from great historical figures, particularly Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. This is appropriate, given his combative approach. His style ranges from subtle comic understatement to verbal napalming. The fun he pokes at himself tends to be gentle. Others he bayonets. Occasionally, he writes like a post - doctoral Anne of Green Gables with an attitude. But he can also write with surgical precision when high - altitude name - dropping is required. For example: "We went directly from our wedding to Walter Annenberg's party for the Queen Mother at Claridge's." More fun is Black's saturation bombing of politicians and the media. When Bob Rae, under the protection of parliamentary immunity, described Black as the "symbol of bloated capitalism at its worst," Black responded by describing Rae as "the symbol of swinish socialist demagogy at its worst." Black notes that, "In mere terms of slinging invective, I had, as I usually do, broken at least even. " Black is being quite uncharacteristically modest. It is doubtful that he has ever been bested in single - combat, polysyllabic abuse. He chases down rivals and critics like a rabid rottweiler. Even his "friends" come away severely mauled. Black does not prevaricate in describing his ambitions and the hardball he often played in achieving them. A child of the Establishment, he hated the dull Toronto of his youth -- in particular Upper Canada College, with its "frequently encountered aroma of urine and formaldehyde." He became a youthful rebel, and was duly expelled. It was partly Black's aversion to Toronto to that led him to Ottawa's Carleton University and eventually to the study of law at Quebec City's Universite Laval, where he pursued a growing interest in Quebec history and Canada's perplexing nature. This led to his scholarly and controversial history |
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| ISSN: | 0008-3100 2292-8421 |