The Confessions of St Augustine. And Some Other Things, Just In Case You Aren’t Into That.

I have read a lot this week.

These are just some of the many millions of Virginia Woolf books which I have been reading for my essay.

Also, I have now read three of the books for the Indie Lit Awards but I am reserving judgement and reviews until the judging process is complete in the interests of scrupulous neutrality.  I am the Switzerland of judges.

So really I have nothing more interesting to tell you about than my reading of The Confessions of St Augustine.

I have a friend who read English Literature at university and then didn’t crack a book for the next eight years because she was so sick of deconstructing and analysing and speed reading.  I think I might feel the same way after doing an autobiography module next term.  St Augustine is our first author – because he’s the first Western autobiography.  It’s not his fault I feel like that though – and of course I recognise that as a Saint, he’s beyond reproach.

Here’s what happens.  St Augustine ponders on some existential questions for a bit about where he was before he was born.  He goes to school and likes playing ball, though adults don’t like him playing ball and he realises he shouldn’t like it either.  He and his friends steal some pears and he agonises for ages about the group mentality (sort of like Lord of the Flies and the Pears) which led him to steal.  Then he becomes a teenager and his hormones go into mental overdrive and he fornicates and fornicates and fornicates.  His Mum weeps.  He joins a weird culty sect which has some very odd ideas and is into astrology.  Then he realises that the odd ideas are odd and that astrology is bogus.  He flops about for a bit like a fish out of spiritual water.  Finally, through a combination of study and divine inspiration, he accepts the truth of God.  His Mum is happy.  Then she dies.  The end.   Then he ponders on some more existential questions.  The end again.

Understandably enough, most other reviews on the interwebs are reading St Augustine for spiritual enlightenment and guidance rather than as literature.  And I think he would repay that.  There’s a lot of food for thought here, if you’ve got the time.  What I would say, in my superficial, missing the point way, is that St Augustine is surprisingly readable.  And although you aren’t supposed to read him as if he was a thoroughly modern man, he does seem to me like someone the modern confuzled person could relate to.  For example, he sort of knows in the back of his mind for ages that really he should just get on with it and accept Jesus but it is so much more fun being a sinner.  On the other hand, modern me doesn’t like his attitude to women.  The woman he lives with for ages who he apparently deeply loved (she’s described as The One, though surely that can’t be a contemporary expression?) isn’t even named.  Also as soon as he becomes a Christian he becomes celibate, rejecting the idea of marriage, which just seems to be another example of the idea that Women Are Always to Blame.

Beyond that, I have to make my own confession – I skipped a lot.  Just too much meandering on unanswerable questions – the sort of questions that make my brain explode because they are just pushing at the boundaries of what words can say without ever reaching an answer.  I am not philosophical enough for that.  I like me some practical answers.