In this late season of life, with never enough time, Joella Werlin draws most on her experience of more than 20 years as a professional “personal historian” — recording and preserving life stories of never-ordinary individuals — to probe biography and autobiography of those who have achieved lasting identity.
Shakespeare?
In the past decade I have been fascinated by the works of William Shakespeare who, in words of scholar Harold Bloom (The Invention of the Human), “will go on explaining us, in part because he invented us.”
I want to ask of Shakespeare the questions I asked of every individual whose life story I recorded, in sum, “Who are you?” It is a privilege of retirement, of “seniority” to question accepted “truths,” as distinct from “verifiable facts.” The “facts” of the life of Shakespeare-the-human are a mystery!
A favorite history professor I interviewed in her late 80s asked me how I thought my undergraduate focus on European history, graduate study in cultural anthropology, and interest in international political issues prepared me for a 15-year career as public affairs manager for a Portland Oregon commercial TV affiliate and later decades recording life stories.
She turned the table and answered her own question: “everything connects,” evoking my mantra (from E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End):
“Only connect!”