Читать книгу The Inventors - Peter Selgin - Страница 12

Prologue

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT TWO MEN WHO WERE VERY IMPORTANT to me. The first was there at my conception, the second came along thirteen years later. Each had a profound influence on me. You could say they invented me, such was their influence.

They invented themselves, too. The first man did so through an act of omission, by denying his past. The second did so through a series of fabrications, by lying about his. The first man was Paul Joseph Selgin, my father – who, it so happens, was an inventor. The second was my eighth-grade English teacher.

I’ve had other inventors, too: a mother, my twin brother, the places I’ve lived, the people I’ve known. They all helped invent me.

We’re made of the past. What we remember, or think we remember, or choose to remember, defines us. Like my father and my teacher, each of us, in different ways and to various degrees, constructs a myth about ourselves that we embrace in part to deny contradictory, unpleasant, or inconvenient truths. We inhabit fictional narratives that we come to think of as “our lives.” From memories sifted, sorted, selected, or synthesized – consciously or unconsciously – we assemble the stories that tell us who we are. In that sense, we’re all inventors.

This book is my invention. I’ve written it to my younger self, but for you. To preserve anonymity, I’ve changed dates, place names, and other identifying details.

May you fall in sympathy with what follows.