Surveying his own conflicted, multi-cultural life from a Bombay boyhood, immigration to Canada, and his re-invention as a literary and theatre critic, poet, and editor who has learned to understand life’s blessings and wounds, Keith Garebian’s autobiography is an act of memory at the service of a changing self. Using vignettes, letters, historical surveys, meditations, and existential summations,
Pieces of My Self
shows Garebian’s trauma, fury, condemnation, ardour, melancholy, satire, and self-understanding. Figures of Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, William Hutt, Irving Layton, Hugh Hood, John Metcalf, Henry Beissel, V.S. Naipaul, and many others pass through this life of a restlessly critical and self-critical author.