Conundrum

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There is no one trans story: Morris’s memoir remains one of many. It’s a fine lesson about her life alone, but an iffy guide to trans lives more generally. Many of us don’t need surgery, many of us need it but don’t get it, and many of us do want it very much, but do not regard it as the climax of anything—hormones, social transition, and outward appearance can all be more important. So can meeting other trans folks: only in Casablanca, after “the operation,” did Morris “set eyes for the first time on others like me.” Jan Morris: She sensed she was 'at the very end of things'. What a life it was …". The Guardian. 22 November 2020 . Retrieved 23 November 2021. This is a beautiful, articulate and sensitively written memoir. Jan Morris held me spellbound, whether describing a scene in the Welsh countryside, or talking about college life or career journalism, or f

It certainly does! I can’t fathom it. My tendency has been to jump in and tell stories. I had forgotten all of this.” Morris's 1974 best-selling memoir Conundrum documented her transition and was compared to that of transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen ( A Personal Autobiography). Later memoirs included Herstory and Pleasures of a Tangled Life. She also wrote many essays on travel and her life, and published a collection of her diary entries as In My Mind's Eye in 2019. [36]

Seriously...

As a wandering writer – she is widely acclaimed for inventing a way of writing about cities that blends history and imaginative description and a sort of psychology of place – Morris made much of herself being an outsider. In Conundrum she wondered whether her “incessant wandering” as a journalist for the Times and the Guardian and freelance “had been an outward expression of my inner journey”. She has resisted the idea of biography, though she allowed Derek Johns, her former agent, to write her literary life, Ariel. In it he notes at one point how “it is interesting to consider that the move from male to female and the move from Englishness to Welshness were roughly concurrent”. She herself has suggested that she always favoured the “soft side” of her character more than “the hard side”, and that Wales was closer to that softness. She is reluctant to talk much about her adventure in gender, since she has said so much before. But I wonder simply if she has a sense of a before and after in the voice of her writing? Do give this beautiful work the time of day. It is short, as filling as a big dinner, and as warm as a cuddle. The book as a whole is primarily of interest for historical reasons, and the second half is largely a desperate attempt to reassure a patriarchal society that her transition was no threat to it.

James - as she was then - Morris knew from a very young age both that he was in the wrong body and that he wanted to be a writer. Through a combination of self-confidence, determination and what Jan herself describes as her ‘insufferable ambition’, she achieved what she set out to, becoming one of the most successful journalists of her generation and then a world-famous author of books about places like Venice, Oxford, Trieste and Manhattan, which re-invented travel writing. Few conversations, at any time of life, are more stimulating, more spontaneous and more genuinely original than those long ridiculous talks we all have, when we are very young, late at night about the meaning of life.” Orthodox Greeks, after a few generations of Venetian Catholic rule, frequently welcomed the arrival of the Muslim Turks – who, if they had unappealing weaknesses for mass slaughter, arson and disembowelment, at least did not despise their subjects as bumpkin schismatics.” The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man's man. Morris wrote many books on travel, particularly about Venice and Trieste. Her Pax Britannica trilogy, on the history of the British Empire, received praise. [37]Mostly from people who go to Trieste or Venice and read my books, and say ‘What did you mean by that’? To be honest I’m not always sure.” Obituary: Jan Morris, a poet of time, place and self". BBC News. 20 November 2020. Archived from the original on 20 November 2020 . Retrieved 21 November 2020.