La presentación del reconocido escritor inglés Andrew Norman Wilson en el Festival Literario de Oxford 2023 con su libro Confessions – A Life of Failed Promises(2022), las memorias de su “vida de promesas fallidas”, de su familia, de los traumas de la niñez, de pecado, fracasos y dolores pero también de aceptación, el perdón y en última instancia, de las alegrías y optimismo que puede entrañar la madurez.
A.N. Wilson has denizen status in these anciently cloaked Brythonic isles like to the way its gnarled and knotted Great Oak trees do. In the tradition of the cultivated man of letters – widely read, of wit and verve – he is erudite, humorous and fairly bursting with story. True to this tradition, Wilson is also exuberantly self-effacing, yet with age has come a propensity to wear the heart outwardly on the sleeve. At the Oxford Literary Festival 2023, lit by the fluted fan columns of the Bodleian Library’s Divinity School (built in the 1400s) he soon has the audience feeling free to laugh, imbibe sadness, anchor in complexity, challenge doubt, rebound with faith, and give way to the imagination. His emotions, thoughts, stories, narrative and reflections are honest, forthright, clear in manner and ready to admit fault.
This biographies man (Dante, C.S. Lewis, Tolstoy, Charles Dickens among others), weighted literary reviewer and fosterer of newspaper opinion column, now addresses his own metamorphosis in a spirit of wisdom and grace. From the latter it soon becomes clear that his mind errs toward mercy and forgiveness for himself and others. He reflects on persons, lived lives, souls deepened by suffering and sin. Wilson’s own life is a story of failed promise he says, of this or that not fulfilled. Yes, in youth, ills were inflicted on him by boarding school sadists; and these remain as scars, though perhaps no longer wounds. And yes, acerbity took hold of A.N. Wilson – elevating of scepticism and doubt – and faith oft dismissed.
Wilson readily admits that many a review mistreated books partially well written or had been unkind when only a small kindness was required, he notes also the immense judgements he inflicted on his parents as a child. Now, more tempered – as a parent and adult – faith returns, imagination and hope blossom.
The human condition, he says, must become self-aware of each beating fault, but perceive beneath, the deeper heartbeat of forbearance. Confessions is a book of stories, of journeys, of ancestors, of family, of friends, of hurt and mistreatment, of sin and fault – it is true about interests and loves, about the great stories Wilson has written, yet also an embrace of falling to one’s knees – this English national treasure’s confessions are thus ultimately joyful, and heart-freeing.
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