Prince Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’ breaks sales record
“Harry’s controversial autobiography has become the fastest selling non-fiction book in history, according to publisher Penguin Random House, which reported more than 1.4 million copies were sold on Tuesday, the first day it went on sale”. (ITV News) #GuinnessWorldRecords
The Duke of Sussex’s appearance on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ scored the largest weeknight audience for the TV show in more than two years. The episode averaged 3.15M total viewers. So how well did Harry use the medium, and how well did it use him?
#Spare #PrinceHarry Developing story …
“(The fonder the memory, the deeper the ache.)
(…) My memory had been spotty since Mummy disappeared, by design, and I didn’t want to fix it, because memory equaled grief.
Not remembering was balm.
It’s also possible that I’m misremembering my own struggles with memory from back then, because I do recall being very good at memorizing some things, like long passages from Ace Ventura and The Lion King. I’d recite them often, to mates, to myself. Also, there’s a photo of me, sitting in my room, at my pull-out desk, and there amid the cubbyholes and chaotic papers sits a silver-framed photo of Mummy.
So. Despite my clear memory of not wanting to remember her, I was also trying gamely not to forget her.”
(Prince Harry, Spare, p.48)
#Spare #Freud #Psychoanalysis
“How surreal, to meet a therapist who already knows part of your life story…
(…) Yes, I’ve already lost my mum, of course, but I’m afraid that by talking about her, now, here, to a perfect stranger, and perhaps alleviating some of the pain of that loss, I’ll be losing her again. I’ll be losing that feeling, that presence of her — or what I’ve always felt as her presence.
The therapist squinted. I tried again.
You see…the pain…if that’s what it is… that’s all I have left of her. And the pain is also what drives me. Some days the pain is the only thing holding me together. And also, I suppose, without the pain, well, she might think…I’ve forgotten her.
That sounded silly. But, well, there it was.
Most memories of my mother, I explained, with sudden and overwhelming sorrow, were gone. On the other side of the Wall. I told her about the Wall. I told her I’d spoken to Willy about my lack of memories of our mother. He’d advised me to look through photo albums, which I’d promptly done. Nothing.
So, my mother wasn’t images, or impressions, she was mainly just a hole in my heart, and if I healed that hole, patched it up — what then?
I asked if all this sounded crazy.
No.
We were silent.
A long time.
She asked me what I needed. Why are you here?
Look, I said. What I need…is to be rid of this heaviness in my chest.
I need…I need…
Yes?
To cry. Please. Help me cry.”
(Prince Harry, Spare, p.309)
“I swear on Mummy’s life. (…) He’d used the secret code,…
(…) But now I saw that even our finest moments, and my best memories, somehow involved death. Our lives were built on death, our brightest days shadowed by it. Looking back, I didn’t see spots of time, but dances with death. I saw how we steeped ourselves in it. We christened and crowned, graduated and married, passed out and passed over our beloveds’ bones. Windsor Castle itself was a tomb, the walls filled with ancestors. The Tower of London was held together with the blood of animals, used by the original builders a thousand years ago to temper the mortar between the bricks. Outsiders called us a cult, but maybe we were a death cult, and wasn’t that a little bit more depraved? Even after laying Grandpa to rest, had we not had our fill? Why were we here, lurking along the edge of that “undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveller returns”?
Though maybe that’s a more apt description of America.
Willy was still talking. Pa was talking over him, and I could no longer hear a word they said. I was already gone, already on my way to California, a voice in my head saying: Enough death — enough.
When is someone in this family going to break free and live?”
(Prince Harry, Spare, p. 398–400)
