Past Forgetting: My Memory Lost and Found

by Jill Robinson

Book Overview

A love story, a mystery, and a memory guide, Past Forgetting shows a writer's determination to re-create her life.Jill Robinson, novelist and author of Bed/Time/Story, wakes from a coma to discover she's lost her memory and just about any sense of who she was.And is.

She likes the look of the man standing next to her bed, but doesn't recognize that he's her husband, Stuart. What matters is that she feels safe around him. As she searches the house for her children, she is reminded that her son and daughter are both grown with families of their own--how well did she ever know them? Can You make up for a past you don't really remember?

It is Stuart who begins to fill in the details for Jill, including the fact that she's a well-known writer, although when she meets with her doctors, they say she may never write again.

Against all odds, Jill Robinson retrieved her unique writing voice, and in this engaging memoir shows how she does it. She takes us with her on her exploration of'tlie connections between memory and creativity, celebrity and anonymity, and loss and discovery. From her first tentative steps outside her house on Wimpole Street to London's sleek West End. From a trip to Oxford to discuss memory with a professor to her amazing voyage to Los Angeles on an assignment for Vanity fair which takes her back to the sixties world of Hockney, Polanski, and Hopper, Jill forges new paths to memory.

In Past Forgetting, Jill Robinson rediscovers friendships she doesn't know she had: Robert Redford tells her stories about her childhood; at John Lahr's London literary teas, she's reintroduced to the writer's world, and Cary Grant offers her memories of her father, Dore Schary. And being with Barbra Streisand reminds her of a time she doesn't quite remember: when her father was running MGM.

In her urgent voyage to redefine herself, Jill asks all the questions you've ever asked on the nature of memory. Is recollection shadowed by emotion? Is memory an act of reinvention? Do people reinvent rather than recollect? In Past Forgetting you'll find the answers and you'll meet a writer you won't want to forget.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060932341
• ISBN13: 9780060932343
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

"I couldn't taste the name"

I was hooked on this book from the opening sentence. As a writer, the thought of losing my memory is terrifying; this chronicle of regaining one's most personal and valuable possession moved me beyond the realm of mere words. And that one apparently simple line -- "I couldn't taste the name" (of a soup) -- fills me with the worst kind of professional envy. Sure, there's some "self-indulgent stuff" in the book; but who can blame a writer for flexing her skills or a person who has come back from such a staggering blow for indulging herself? On the whole, however, this is a remarkably restrained piece of work. Jill Robinson deserves nothing but praise for "Past Forgetting."

A dazzling kalediscope of memory lost and found.

Jill Robinson is blessed with an elegant, original prose style, and a life story that gives it wing in Past Forgetting. This is an amazingly original autobiography which takes the reader into the heart and brain of its subject as she struggles to recover memory, and in the process reclaims a fascinating life which began in Hollywood as daughter of MGM head Dore Schary, where she deveoped her writer's eye for the telling detail. What for others would have been a catastrophic event: the siezure which caused a brain storm and severe memory loss, is in her hands a deeply intelligent and entertaining tale of life and memory recaptured. It is also a rare love story of a husband's devotion, and of a woman's courage.

Geez!

I am still not finished because I don't want this book to end. Whoever said that whatever happened to your brain would affect your writing was "bent". Having had a tumor removed and having had my brain damaged to save my life, I am relating like crazy (bad use of words....another problem). Read,"Bed/Time/Story" years ago. This surpasses even the brilliance of that. My step-brother, Robbie Schary Wollin, knew and was distantly related to you, so I was struck by the face which stared out at me from the cover and how much it resembled his family. I now am going to get something wonderful and sweet from the cupboard, a piece of paper towel to keep the sugar from schmutzing up my outfit, and am going to finish your book, damn it. One thing: with what memory I have I will hopefully be able to read this wonder of language again....because I will forget the feelings it arose in me and once again introduced me to a woman of uncommon valor.

An Unstoppable read. Compelling & compassionate. Thumbs up.

I've followed Jill Robinsons work before in Perdido and Bed/Time/Story --and I was expecting a lot. Her sense of dialog and her ability to capture the true canvass of people is brilliant. I don't think this book is necessarily writen for people who are close to any kind of illness -- but for people who are looking for true insight into the meaning of their own lives.