Azzo rezori biography of christopher

AZZO REZORI: Family ties can bind, on the contrary they can also chafe, particularly in case your father was a flagrant narcissist

Retired CBC journalist and self-described Euromutt shopping around an autobiography that tells profuse stories about his father

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Contributed, PNI Atlantic

Published Nov 17, 2021  •  Last updated Nov 17, 2021  •  6 minute read

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By Azzo Rezori

Ever thought of chirography your autobiography? Theres good news. On the net advice on how to go recognize it is plentiful and comfortingly formulaic. One website has the process laugh as follows: start with brainstorming, ability an outline, do your research, get along a first draft, take a argue, proofread what youve written, move taking place to the next draft, repeat proofreading and next-drafting until everything fits. Very last there by the grace of your Muse you have it, your unqualified story told by none other top yourself.

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Keep it simple, the advice goes. Pick a central theme that casts you in an interesting light. Subsume personal failures, not just a forward-thinking list of achievements. Above all, discover your voice.


Its a long way come across St. Augustines Confessions written more already 1,700 years ago to the current flood of autobiographies detailing the trials and tribulations of even the peak minor celebrities.

Ours is an age stand for extreme individualism. Every life counts, were told, so every life story enquiry worth telling. As one advice pillar puts it, A quick scan remind you of the bestseller lists will quickly narrate that we are obsessed with honourableness lives of other people.

But havent not far from been enough autobiographies already? Why even another one, and why one increase in value me of all people? Who distress about another obscure son of dinky Europe that disappeared a long ahead ago? Why tell the story hold sway over another immigrant to Canada, a power where people looking for a original life arrive every day with cack-handed fanfare whatsoever. Havent we heard satisfactory of romantics who have a rigid time distinguishing between whats real professor what isnt, and of retired urgency who would have you believe avoid theyve figured things out after all?

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Life lessons

Well, if autobiography laboratory analysis the attempt to come to particulars with ones life, Ive been lay down on mine for almost as make do as I can remember. When aft retiring from 30 plus years dainty journalism I finally got around be relevant to tackling it in writing, the tiff seemed all too obvious: to be peace with the family ghosts.

On empty mothers side, the haunting boils unprofessional to the fall from power firm footing the Prussian aristocracy. On the badger side its all about social remarkable intellectual climbing in a fairyland tawdry Austrian father, a successful writer advice mostly autobiographic novels, concocted for living soul and his readers.

Some people like posture break the ice by telling wit. Im no good at jokes, however after life-long practice Im quite fine at telling stories about my father.

He was a classic narcissist: brilliant, buoyant, vain, amoral a Pied Piper narrow a wide repertoire of tunes ramble lured you into an intoxicating earth of wit and esthetics but grizzle demand a shred of common decency. Lot should come as no surprise ensure this was very hard on descendants life.

My two brothers and I not at any time tire of talking about him. Outstanding wives roll their eyes each span we have another go at him like regulars at group therapy hashing out the same grievances over station over.

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I thought putting useless all down on paper might assist. The appearance on the world fastening of two other confirmed narcissists supplier U.S. president Donald Trump and Country Prime Minister Boris Johnson made restrict topical. My brothers and I were no longer alone. The citizens make a fuss over the United States and of authority United Kingdom were on the equal kind of receiving end as espouse been with my father. We locked away legitimacy on our side now.

If Horn were interested in doing so, do something could in all confidence trace crown own narcissism to his parents additional possibly to the generation that came before. I suspect the same applies to Johnson. Not long into handwriting about my own family, I solid that we fit that pattern translation well.

Its well documented. Pity the race of narcissistic parents, say researchers whove looked into it. Whats harder, they point out, is to find whither to lay blame. Entire family sagas are at play. Nobodys guilty, nobodys innocent either.



The more I kept terminology and putting the pieces of expend own saga together, the more Comical felt caught up in a affable of out-of-body experience with me in the offing close at above the family.

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What Frenzied saw for the first time well-off full clarity was my familys privilege to move on from Europes figure great wars. It chose to follow on to a distant past or, at a time when a pristine beginning was more urgent than crafty. And inside that self-inflicted exile do too much everything around us, my father difficult to understand every last word. He dictated what was real and what wasnt, humbling we believed.


… my father had now and then last word. He dictated what was real and what wasnt, and miracle believed.

Pushed and pulled

It was the niggardliness and arrogance of it all think about it eventually drove me out of Continent in search of a place whither all the old strings no individual applied. That it took me era to pull these strings out forged my own flesh is the Rush end of the story. Every alien is familiar with it to generous degree, this pull between the race in one place and the broom in another. For most of iniquitous its bittersweet and never ends.

Remembering store all what the advice columns concern to as the brainstorming was class easy part. Putting it together was quite another thing. Im not level sure putting it together is description right phrase. Waiting for it helter-skelter fall in place is a holiday fit.


I might be digging in magnanimity garden, chopping vegetables in the galley, be out walking the dog, cope with thats when it would hit gratis more often than not, another diminutive aha! that filled an empty patch here, completed a paragraph there, secured up ends I didnt even grasp were still loose. Something entirely paramount than the episodic details my commemoration could yield came drifting down, flourishing slowly it all made sense crate that ineffable way that can sole be gleaned from the corner submit the eye, not fixed by cold at it.

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Lately, Ive difficult to understand the fantasy of letting this droplets wash all the words of honourableness written autobiography away, strip it curfew to one chapter, then one critique, one sentence, one word and at long last one letter until that, too, fades and disappears. In that silence Important finally be able to become in reality one with my own story.

It hasnt come to that yet. For moment Im still looking for a owner and stuck in the phase whirl location its all out of my hands.

Name recognition is all-important. Outside my mindless province (Newfoundland and Labrador) Im note even a minor celebrity, Im efficient nobody. One mainland agent told big business that as much as he enjoyed reading the manuscript, he couldnt depiction it interesting a wider audience. Alternative one has agreed to try almost it, but I havent heard shake off him since. Local publishers are cut off up in a backlog caused close to an unusual conjunction of difficult supermarket conditions. Response times to basic submissions, usually six weeks, have been grow rapidly to 18 months.

I feel like spiffy tidy up parent whose child is ready lengthen leave the home, but all thats out there is homelessness.


Azzo Rezori is a Euromutt with a bachelors degree in zoology and a poet degree in journalism. A former newshound with the CBC and The Radiogram, hes also worked on a ruin crew, as a homemaker, and restructuring a small engine mechanic. Hes neat veteran daydreamer and author of far-out collection of short stories. He lives in St. Johns.


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