A Beginning

When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right-angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.

From: Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (London: Mandarin Paperbacks, rpt. 1995)

One of the many things Scout’s words here highlights is the existence and inevitability of competing narratives of the same event, which partly explains the reason I chose to name my blog as I have: it will inevitably represent only my version of things. Another reason that governed the christening is that this is a book very dear to me, and whenever I reread it (never in full), I am reminded of my childhood, and I thought I could have a blog that not only focuses on my present, but also my past, and the ‘pastness’ of my present.