A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-98 Book

I'm fairly familiar with Guinness' movies and I know something about his life, but this is the first time I've encountered him as an author. The book was an unusual reading experience for me since it is a journal written for an audience. Guinness gets away with not organizing his thoughts and sometimes the narrative seems a bit stream-of-conscious. Memories are all jumbled up with the present. I never lost track, but the lack of transitions between completely different subjects is quite jarring. I guess that's the way journals are, but as I said, this was meant to be read by others.

I felt that Guinness did this project for the money, not to leave a legacy. He talks about money and his relative poverty all the time. (Give me a break.) This book seems to have been somewhat easy for him. The man has quite a few quotations available in his head -- particularly from Shakespeare -- and he applies them to just about any situation, including the birds and animals he so loved.

I've seen enough of Guinness' movies to know that he was quite gifted in comedies and drama. But I never knew he acted on the stage throughout his life, and did much Shakespeare with the Old Vic and elsewhere. He even played Hamlet.

So Guinness sails through this book talking about whatever he wants: his wife, his grand and great grandchildren, his dogs and fish and the birds outside, his life, politics, Mass, his vacations, his memories etc. And it's interesting because you want to know about the great Sir Alec. But one has the feeling he's not letting you read between the lines. It's all very controlled, if scattered.