Introduction
WHEN I BEGAN this somewhat strange experience, at the end of
January 2026 — writing of my own life in the first person — I had no idea
whether, at eighty years old, I’d live long enough, or have the courage and
persistence, to ever finish it.
Now it is finished, at the end of July 2026, I admit I am
somewhat disabled, with lingering doubts about my heart and treatment for a
tumour in my stomach. But, as my wife would report, she who knows my condition
well and is what is these days known as my ‘carer’, and anyone who knows me
even more than a little would confirm, I am perfectly well in my mind. The fact
is that many people don’t live beyond eighty and those who do constitute a very
small percentage of the population. Why I should still be here is a mystery.
I have one surviving sister, but my younger brother and
sister are both gone, as are my parents, of course, and all my numerous aunts
and uncles and, sadly, most of my few close male friends. I have some surviving
cousins, male and female, two my age, the rest younger, but I have little
contact with them. I have had two wives; the first died young while the second,
to whom I have now been married for more than forty years, has been my close
and loving friend through the best years of my life and has lately become a
loving carer. No two women could have been more different and yet I love the
second as much as I did the first. In that respect I have been luckier than
most, luckier than I deserve.
As you shall see, mine was a life with its fair share of
both pleasure and pain, some shame and regret, with very little to boast about.
So it is not vanity that motivates me to write what follows. Rather, I am
driven by two irresistible forces.
The first is that I am simply compelled to write. I always have been. It’s what I do, what
I am. I have no idea how I would have otherwise spent so many hours of the
past. Writing — especially writing fiction (storytelling) — is a lone, lonely,
non-collaborative and indoor activity during which your only friends are your
own creations, fictitious, invisible and yet strangely real and present. It’s
living in a world of fantasy, the very opposite of what most men consider
‘manly’.
But the traditional New Zealand manly and outdoor
activities, such as hunting, fishing, golfing, surfing — especially with other
men — or team sports, have never interested me. When urged by friends to join
them in their favourite masculine hobby I always wanted to say (but never did),
“I’ll go fishing with you if you come to the opera with me”. I know it sounds
pompous and rude — I’ve never actually said it — but I hope it makes the point.
Indeed, ‘sporty’ and ‘arty’ have so little in common that they don’t
comfortably mix. To be born naturally sporty into an arty family must be just
as painful as the reverse.
So, it seems I am arty and not sporty. I must write.
Something. Somehow. But now, at this moment in my life, having become
accustomed to being somewhat disabled, and having received from the printer the
first copies of my latest novel, Twice
Upon a Time There Lived, the writing of which, by the way, was terribly
interrupted by illness and hospitalization, I have no idea for a new novel. But
I must write something. And this is it.
The second irresistible force is the result of personal
experience. Having read and enjoyed a good novel it is only natural — at least
it has always been to me — to want to learn about the author and perhaps,
having read his or her biography or autobiography, learn a little of how, why,
where and when he or she wrote the novel or novels which were so much enjoyed
and admired. I have authored fifteen books and over the years have had feedback
and correspondence from readers all over the world, so it is at least possible
that other appreciative readers will want to know more about the life and times
of their author, Robert Philip Bolton.
This memoir is largely about my literary life. If there is
any unusual emphasis here I admit to purposely identifying events that may seem
of minor or no importance in themselves but were the inspiration for a short
story, novel or even part of a novel. On the other hand, I may have underplayed
or omitted more important and significant events which had no influence on my
literary life.
My readers will recognize and perhaps appreciate the
allusions, references and sometimes long excerpts included in this narrative.
However, readers who do not ‘get’ the literary references can be assured that
understanding them is not essential; they should, I hope, be interesting in
themselves.
Perhaps each motivation does
contain a grain of pride. But, in fact, there is much about my life of which I
am not proud while some events brought nothing but embarrassment and pain.
Nevertheless, I have tried to be honest about everything, including those
unpleasant memories which would be easier to ignore.
These, my memories, literary and otherwise, pleasant and
painful, whether vividly clear or vague, constitute my only resource. I have
delivered what I can remember, in my own way, with my own partiality. All
things forgotten must, by definition, be omitted, perhaps to be discovered
later by a professional biographer.
That, you see, is the difference between an autobiography
and a biography: A biographer is a scholar, a professional who must diligently search
for the truth. Names, places, addresses, dates and times must be discovered and
then verified. Important events in the subject’s life must be reported
accurately, and where there are mysterious gaps, he must exhaust every resource
before resorting, reluctantly, to educated speculation.
On the other hand, the writer of an autobiography — me, for
example — has no such duty. He merely has to lazily release his memories, such
as they might be, so that they pour onto paper in a series of words, phrases,
clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters which convey to the reader a series
of events whose presentation may or may not be complete or entirely accurate
but which, when taken together in order, represent not only the progress of his
life but also, perhaps, when read between the lines (as they say), something of
his otherwise unknown nature and personality and what made him write what he
did.
So, here it is, then: Robert Philip Bolton by Robert Philip
Bolton.
A few comments from preview readers
‘I
read your memoir yesterday afternoon and became completely absorbed in your
stories. It genuinely felt as though I had been transported back in time,
experiencing those years through your eyes.'
‘Of
all my writer friends, you're the only one I know who belongs up there with
Hemingway and the greats. I write genre fiction. You have always written
literature. And brilliant literature.’
‘More than anything, I simply wanted to thank you for
sharing your life so openly. The Life of My Stories is a
wonderful record of the people, experiences and events that shaped both your
life and your writing, and I feel very fortunate to have read it.’
‘Today I have finished The Life of My Stories and
thoroughly enjoyed it. I hesitate to say that it is your best book as I
love other of your books all for different reasons.'
‘…you have managed to impart yourself, the real
you, into your words. So, the whole reads just as if the reader is having a
one-on-one conversation with you. What a skill that is, and, altho’ the book is
not designed to be novelistic, or to be a page turner, it IS a page turner.’
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