Journal Article

Two perceptions of childhood: Alexander Baron (1917-1999) and Howard Jacobson (1942-)

Baker, William

2023

Overview

Alexander Baron’s From the City from the Plough (1948) received high praise as the best fictional record of ordinary British soldiers’ experiences during the Second World War. Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question (2010) won the prestigious Booker Prize for the best novel of the year. In 2022, each author's memoirs were published: Baron’s Chapters of Accidents: A Writer's Memoir and Jacobson's Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings. This article reviews their work and highlights what both memoirs reveal about the authors’ early years and subsequent creative projects. The article also considers other sources, including their writing at school and, in Baron's instance, personal correspondence. Other considerations in the article are an examination of the idea of “memoir” before a discussion of the openings of Baron’s and Jacobson’s memoirs, their differing styles prior to comparing their backgrounds, in Baron’s case the outer fringes of the East End of London, in Jacobson’s the Manchester suburbs, family relations, especially with parents, education, literary achievements, reception of their work including the posthumous growth of Baron’s reputation as a novelist.

• Publisher: Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Armed forces / Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) / Autobiographies / British & Irish literature / English literature / Epistolography / Families & family life / Jacobson, Howard / Novels / Parent-child relations / Writers