Reading Journal #4

Benevento portrays himself in a very methodological way, starting with his family history starting several generations back and then describing his birth and first few years of life using several anecdotes. He portrays himself as a man with a very clearly defined purpose in the world, whose detailed origins are infinitely important to the man he has become. We know where and when he was born, all about his parents, and many of the specific events associated with his early life, career, and parental guidance thereof. Andre, on the other hand, remains unidentified by name throughout the entire piece. He is simply a first person entity, an “I” who describes memories in a rather haphazard fashion that mirrors the way we actually remember things. We know that he has spent some time in Rome from his description of a summer’s afternoon in the Campo de Fiore, and later we learn that he actually lived there during his youth, that he returns to places where he created memories as an older man, indicating that he now lives in a different place, and he also mentions that he came to the city as a refugee, indicating that he had left another place before he came to Rome. However, unlike Benevento we never learn about his family or its origins or the black and white outline of all of the moves in his life (Benevento would have included anything as momentous as a move between cities, much less a move that was attached with being a refugee). This makes Andre’s piece much more open ended, as if it could have happened to any young boy in the 1960’s in Rome. It could have been anyone’s experience. Benevento’s experience was, on the other hand, specifically his own.
I think that both of the authors are very conscious of their readers and have a very specific message they are trying to get across, but I think that Benevento was much better at getting that message across than Andre was. Benevento was very clear in saying that he wanted to record the events of his life with a “certain amount of pride.” In other words, he believes that is life is worth remembering and he sets out to do so. He thinks that the first mark of a good life is his strong family, and the second (which is all we can identify from the readings we have done so far) is excellence in a respected trade. So he starts his autobiography with a description of his “very ancient and gifted family” from whence he came, and he outlines exactly who his family is and all of their virtues, as he sees them. Then he goes on to outline several narrative from his childhood, aimed at showing fortuitous signs over his life or to set up the coming struggle over his career that he discusses later. As that was his second mark of importance that is what he then turns his attention to, and he describes every detail of how he became a self supporting and well respected goldsmith. Andre is not nearly this direct about stating his reasons for writing an autobiography.
I think that “believable” is a very inaccurate term to apply to an autobiography. Both of the authors describe their life as they see fit, and both are believable to a point. Benevento’s life is obviously edited to put himself in the most respectable light possible, and Andre’s life was edited to become a story. Both of them contain truth and omit truths, both have and lack details that the other supplies in abundance. I think that they are both merely different ways of portraying the truth of events of a life.