The Third and Only Way: Reflections on Staying AliveDuke University Press, 1996 - 209 pages In this autobiographical volume, the remarkable Helen Bevington looks for answers to the question of how to live or, more specifically, how to confront growing older. A familiar face on the literary landscape since the mid-1940s, Bevington contemplates the course of her own life in view of the suicide of her father, the final years her mother spent in unwilling solitude, and the tragic suicide of her son following a crippling automobile accident from which he could never recover. How is one to face the inevitability of death? What is the third alternative? How to persevere in life? The unique Bevington way of autobiography recreates lessons and insights of other lives, historical figures, and compelling incidents, and combines them in a narrative that follows the emotional currents of her life. Evoking a wide range of historical and literary figures, including Chekhov, Marcus Aurelius, Flannery O'Connor, Simone de Beauvoir, Thoreau, Beatrix Potter, Sappho, Yeats, Alexander the Great, Montaigne, Saint Cecilia, Virginia Woolf, Liv Ullmann, and many others, Bevington finds in these lives a path that has guided her search away from solitude. Through her reflections on the ten years that followed her son's death, we become aware of how far she has traveled, how the search has brightened, how she has eloquently evolved into old age. In the end she is sitting, like the Buddha, under her own fig tree, waiting not for death but for further illumination. An original contemplation of the universal dilemmas and tragedies of existence, The Third and Only Way is at once warm, funny, and inspiring--full of learning and wisdom. |
Contents
Chekhovs Way | 19 |
Uncommon Women and Their Ways | 36 |
The Way with Words | 75 |
And Yet | 124 |
Looking Back | 138 |
Ways of Travel | 176 |
The Laughter Must Be Kept | 203 |
End of Story | 207 |
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Abelard alive angel Apaches asked Augusta Beatrix Potter beautiful became become believe big bang blue body born Boswell Byron called Charley child daughter dead death Democritus diary died E. B. White Eliot escape face Fanny Fårö father girl happy hate Helen Bevington hell Héloïse husband island Jane Austen Joanna Southcott John Johnson journey Katherine knew Lady Blessington later laugh letters light verse live London look love affair lovers Malden marriage married Mary Maurice Goudeket Middlemarch mind mistress Montaigne months mother Murry never night novel old age passion Peter play poem poet poetry rabbit Robert Lowell Sappho Shelley sister snow leopard solitude soul stayed Steve story suicide tell thing Thoreau thought told took Virginia Woolf walked Wallace Stevens wanted wife woman women words write wrote Yeats young