“... novel of initiation and development, in the course of which a young hero is led from adolescent self-absorption and egocentricity on the margins of the social world through a variety of instructive experiences – often a mixture of the erotic and the aesthetic – to a state of adulthood and responsibility at the centre of contemporary ...”

“... that the diarist is not immune from the effects of hindsight, ignorance, partiality, bias and self-justification in what he writes. In Crossman’s case, these distortions are not disabling. He is singularly free from self-deception and his candour often punctures his own pretensions. For instance, the ‘pretty good ...”

“... whose allegiances, manipulations and treacheries Mary McCarthy described with satirical (and self-satirising) play in her essay ‘My Confession’, published in Encounter in 1954.City College’s young men were determined to escape naivety and provincialism. They did not recognise the authority of Christian tradition and had little interest in Jewish ...”

“... my dear Guy, you must beware of melancholy: it’s a vice. Parts of this advice are inevitably self-advice, or self-justification (Flaubert’s hatred of all forms of exercise, gymnastics and sport was well known). Parts of it miss the mark: it would take more than work to keep Maupassant in good health, since the ...”

“... with science. Ultimately, all teaching in the fine arts department pays a kind of homage to self-will. First defined in the 15th century by Leonardo Bruni as studies meant to ‘perfect and adorn a human being’, the humanities to this day sing their ability to turn out individuals capable of independent critical thought. At the same time, in order to ...”

“... claims. So if I’m convinced that I played my coming-out scene to my mother in a key of sickly self-pity, then the reality was surely worse. Did I compare my sexual orientation with her own road accident a few years earlier, as something that had to be dealt with in all its damage rather than wished away? I’m afraid I did. As the years went by she must ...”

“... Frenchmen, men of ‘absolute normality’. The typical Houellebecq hero is a bored, alienated, self-pitying man who is losing his place in society, at work and, worst of all, in the bedroom. In a ruthless, zero-sum sexual marketplace, he loses out to men who are more powerful or more virile. Houellebecq is notorious for his pornographic depictions of sex ...”

“... to leave behind: murder, intoxication, libertinage, art and revolution are sublime forms of self-expression. At the head of this parade is the rogue poet François Villon, imprisoned in the Châtelet in 1462; on the last float, the heroines from Jacques Rivette’s 1981 movie, Le Pont du Nord, are waving goodbye, along with the two keynote ...”

“... by her mother and brother (her father is dead), she can hardly be said to have such a thing as a self-image. She sees her reflection in the mirror in virtually non-human terms: ‘It’s a face like a piece of technology, and her two eyes are cursors blinking … It expresses everything all at once, which is the same as expressing nothing.’ Connell’s ...”

“... the possibility of a ‘moral utopia’. While there was irony in the comment, he valued it as a self-reliant, resourceful and mutually supportive society, distant from the places of power and below the notice of official imagination. After he died, a book called Island Stories appeared, collated from his letters and articles, notes and fragments. It’s the ...”

“... over a plain blue dress and black socks. The socks, in particular, would have appalled her younger self. What was Nella wearing when she met Dr Elmer S. Imes, the man who would become her husband? I wish I knew. It was the summer of 1918. Larsen had worked at Lincoln Hospital throughout the Spanish flu epidemic, protected only by a gauze mask. Elmer was eight ...”

“... Victorian Society. Today Stedman Jones denies he was ever a true believer, describing his younger self as more a ‘crypto-Fabian’ than a Marxist. Even at his most radical, he was never an economic determinist; and he didn’t believe that Marxists should be satisfied with a history from below that brought previously excluded figures into the standard ...”

“... or realistic act of violence emerged in the wake of the First World War, and became increasingly self-referential during and immediately after the Second. But it’s not the puzzle-solving that makes me read detective novels, though it provides much of the narrative momentum. It’s something else, something related to melodrama, and reflected in the ...”

“... Dahlographies, the first unofficial one by Jeremy Treglown (who busted many of Dahl’s many self-mythologisations) and the huge ‘official’ one by Donald Sturrock, which, while seeking to bring out the best in Dahl, doesn’t conceal his self-aggrandising side.Through the mid-1960s Dahl wrote film ...”

“... honest to yourself about yourself is good for you – which is I suppose what all narratives about self-realisation must be about. By contrast The Magician, which is not about coming out but about staying firmly in, occupies a much more complicated and neurotic world, in which Mann’s negation of his homosexual feelings is admittedly a kind of moral failure ...”