Those who have read Donald Keene's 1996 memoir "On Familiar Terms" may wonder whether it was necessary for him to bring out another that covers much the same ground. One suspects that Keene published "Chronicles of My Life" simply because he had been asked to write a series of columns about his life for the Yomiuri Shimbun (they also appeared in English in the Daily Yomiuri) and that, having done so, he was reluctant to let them go to waste. "Chronicles" is, therefore, too much of a rehash to be called an important memoir, but Keene is such a skillful writer that, even though the tales he tells are familiar, the elegance of the telling makes them a pleasure to read.
No further evidence of Keene's talent is needed beyond his success in convincing us, in the pages of this short book, that a life spent mostly in a "cloistered academic career" can be packed with the pleasure that comes from a passion for learning.
As a 16-year-old freshman at Columbia, for example, during a day at the beach, Keene asks his Chinese friend Lee to teach him some Chinese characters. Lee makes a horizontal line in the sand, the character for "one," and goes on to teach Keene a few more simple ideograms. Most of us would leave it at that, but Keene, budding scholar that he is, pressgangs Lee into daily lunches at a Chinese restaurant where his friend guides him through a Chinese novel. "Each character I learned," Keene writes, "was a precious postage stamp that I pasted in the album of my memory." The album grew as he went on and, of course, came to be stuffed with Japanese language and literature.