Description
Stepladder to Hindsight is about a fascinating man who has reached a turning point in his life and looks back. In this work, renowned academic and life-writer Richard Freadman turns the pen on himself, producing an immensely compelling narrative of his life.
Elegant and richly self-aware, Stepladder to Hindsight gives us unbridled access to a complex life and a unique mind. Within these pages you will find humour and tragedy, peppered with astute literary commentary and philosophical musings. This ‘almost memoir’ is fiercely intelligent and so addictively personal that it is hard to put down.
“…an eloquent book, a unique combination of compelling storytelling, searching reflection, with an extraordinary range of mood and style – an original take on the art of life writing.”
—Arnold Zable
“…an engaging volume of essays, intimately and sympathetically revealing, covers a wide range of literary and (in connection with his reading difficulties and depression) medical learning, offered in an eminently readable, eloquent and smoothly flowing fluid way.”
– Serge Liberman, OAM
Read the review by Eugene Stelzig, Distinguished Teaching Professor of English Emeritus, SUNY Geneseo
About the author: Richard Freadman was educated at Brandeis University and the University of Oxford. Now Emeritus Professor of English at La Trobe University, he was the Founding Director of the Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography there and an international authority on autobiography, biography and other forms of ‘life writing’. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he now works as a volunteer making life writing available to people in dementia care, palliative care and cancer remission settings. He writes and lectures on illness narrative, and continues to write autobiography and short fiction. He is married with three children and currently divides his time between Melbourne and Florida, where his wife Diane is currently working in the corporate world. In Florida he has become an aficionado of alligators, and they, it seems to him, astonished observers of him.
