Let’s concede at the outset that Robert Irwin’s account of his own life is nowhere near as compelling as is his slam-bang historical tour of Orientalist scholarship, For Lust of Knowing. Still, though this is by far the lesser book, it brings its own insights into the attraction of such studies for a Western scholar.

Irwin is admirably frank about his own privileged status that allowed him to study at Oxford, and draws those experiences with a certain clarity about his own state at the time: “In the sixties I was young, fit and lean, with everything before me… I was also lonely, unconfident, sex-starved and somewhat mad… When was life going to start? God knows why but, as I have already mentioned, I had an ambition. I wanted to become a saint.”

Though he is unable to identify a moment when that ambition first emerged, he provides a diverting account of his largely-unsuccessful road to that goal, spiked with amusing and insightful observations about sixties culture, e.g. “The affectation of poverty was an important strain in the hippy style”; “We were against war, sexual prudery, censorship, bourgeois values, but above all against parents.”

I was excited to come upon his account of being a student of John Wansbrough, whom he calls “one of the most remarkable men I have ever met.” His short sketch might be as much of a biography as we ever get of this pivotal figure in the history of Qur’anic scholarship. Irwin does leave me wanting more here—he confidently asserts that “though some thoroughly deconstructive ideas about the origins of Islam and the compilation of the Qur’an were put forward by Wansbrough and a few other scholars in the seventies, the best and latest evidence is that the Qur’an was written down quite soon after the Prophet’s death and written down, moreover, in a form very close to the one we now have.” The only such evidence that he cites are the famous Sana’a fragments, but he does not tell us exactly how they make this case—Wansbrough’s own reasoning was founded on our lack of a complete early manuscript. There is clearly a more complex argument to be made than can or should be presented in the context of a memoir, so I am left to suppose that this case is not as closed as Irwin makes it sound.

His experiences in the Sufi tariqa in Algeria are fascinating, as there are aspects of the mystical path that seem to come completely naturally to him, while others evade him. Toward the end of his memoir Irwin gives an account of his continuing Muslim faith, as well the aspects of Muslim belief that he cannot agree with (he finds “depressing” the “petty ritualism” and the “chilly legalism of the Muslim religious establishment”).

In Terry Eagleton’s review of For Lust of Knowing he says that “Irwin comes across as a genial, rather unworldly, upper-class English scholar, struggling to preserve his public-school values of fairness and decency in the face of what he sees as Said's barbarous slur on oriental studies.” While Irwin’s memoir doesn’t change this image that much, it does somewhat put the lie to the “unworldly” part—we come away realizing that, privilege notwithstanding (or rather partly as an advantage of that privilege), Irwin has seen more of the world than many do.

“Until I was well into my thirties I needed gurus,” Irwin concludes, without ever having quite figured out why. “It is no part of this memoir, but, in the long run, I felt the vast gravitational pull of the everyday, of work and of marriage. I fell to earth.” Indeed, and if this account of a misfiring attempt to reach sainthood never truly soars, it still has much to offer. ( )

"In the autumn of 1966 it seemed to me that I had no destiny, for my future was blank. Now, as I write, it seems to me that my destiny is already mostly in the past" (122).

Robert Irwin is one of my favorite novelists, the author of such wonderful works as The Arabian Nightmare (his first), The Limits of Vision, and Satan Wants Me, and that would have been enough to interest me in his memoir. And indeed, this book discloses to a reader of Irwin's fiction many of the crypto-autobiographical vectors in his writing. But the the promise of accounts of his experiences in the emergence of the English counterculture in the 1960s and of his own involvement in Algerian Sufism made the memoir irresistable.

Irwin expresses nostalgia for his experience of the hippy sixties, while powerfully deglamorizing the counterculture. He is disenchanted and strikingly contemptuous of his younger self. In addition to drugs, mysticism, music, and romantic love, he recounts his academic odyssey and encounters with intellectuals such as R.C. Zaehner, Bernard Lewis, and the Perennialist school of religious scholarship.

Irwin professes his abiding faith in the message of Islam and the value of Sufi praxis, despite the horror with which he regards conspicuous portions of the global Muslim community. His respect for the 'Alawi tariqa in which he was initiated has not been effaced. But the book almost reads as though it might have been entitled "Memoirs of a Failed Dervish," because he confesses his own lack of attainment and inability to derive consequence from his mystical strivings. Still, he provides details of the perplexing effects of his aspiration. "Like body odours, ecstasy is something that nice people don't talk about, but the hell with that" (78).

There is certainly a significant dose of melancholy in Irwin's retrospection. "I cannot think of anything useful I have learned from dreams, or any instance in which a dream has served as valuable inspiration," he writes (215). In a highly enjoyable reflection on his youthful interest in science fiction, Irwin remarks: "I have lost the capacity to be astounded and I am sad about that" (19). For me, his memoir was like summer sunshine filtered through browning autumn leaves.

As the memoirs are collected the tone becomes darker, materialising into a reflection that seems painful for Mister Irwin to behold.

Nuggets of interest are scattered through out but ultimately this work, besides the brilliantly embossed cover, pales in the shadow of Robert's fiction and academic writings.... ( )

Robert Irwin's autobiography of the Sixties between Oxford, SOAS and a Sufi taqiyya in Algeria is interesting rather than compelling book. Rather disjointed and at times confusing (who is the mysterious Ayesha who appears at the end? His ex-girlfriend Juliet?). I must admit to having developed a strong antipathy to the persona Irwin constructs over the course of the book, though he is a man whose other books I have greatly enjoyed and benefitted from. [Indeed having met him subsequently I must attest to liking him in person.] ( )