In a reminiscence about his younger sister Marcia, Isaac Asimov observes:
| Now here's a funny thing. Marcia remembers that I taught her to like Gilbert and Sullivan and that I had friends in the science fiction world who were interesting and witty, but she doesn't remember that we ever fought. She pictures an idyllic existence between us and I have found this to be true of other people who have shared memories with me. They wipe out whole continents of fact and construct some fairy tale that never existed and insist that that's the way it was. Maybe it is more comfortable to create your own past, but I can't do it. I remember things too well — although I don't say that my own past is entirely immune to reconstruction. When I wrote my autobiography and consulted my diary, I was astonished at the things I had forgotten, as well as the things I remembered that weren't so. They were all matters of trivial detail, however. |
(from Chapter 4, "Marcia", of I. Asimov: A Memoir by Isaac Asimov; cf. AsimovOnHappiness (7 Nov 2007), Isaac Asimov (28 Nov 2007), AsimovOnPrecocity (2 Dec 2002), ...)
TopicLiterature - TopicLife - 2007-12-10
(correlates: AsimovOnPrecocity, RuddyGore, AsimovOnHappiness, ...)