Conundrum

by MORRIS, JAN

• ISBN13: 9781590171899
• ISBN10: 1590171896
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-16
• Publisher: NYRB Classics

Summary

The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man's man. Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. Conundrum,one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris's hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

Author Biography

JAN MORRIS (1926–), is Anglo-Welsh and lives in Wales. Educated at Oxford, and a member of the British Army, she has written over forty books, most recently, The World: Life and Travel, 1950-2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
1 Under the piano—above the seatrans-sexuality—my conundrum	1	(7)
2 Living a falsehood—the nest of singing-birds —on Oxford—a small lump—in the cathedral—laughing	8	(9)
3 Sex and my conundrum—in the hayloft—gender and Bolsover Ma.	17	(6)
4 The colonel's greeting—as to soldiering—impostor in the mess—Otto-non-persons	23	(11)
5 Identity—precedents of sorts—Dr. Benjamin—'to alter the body!'	34	(11)
6 'Zero!'	45	(4)
7 Rescued—a grand love—objets d'art—the nightingale	49	(9)
8 Three employers—Anybody from the Guardian'—half a column—among the Egyptians—abhorrence	58	(10)
9 To Everest—the male brilliance—the male rhythm—a holy man	68	(9)
10 A trace of paranoia?—a bad world—no place for me	77	(5)
11 Pleasing my senses—the lust of Venice—the solace of Africa—sublimations	82	(8)
12 Changing sex—hormonal effects—a precarious condition—self-protection—rules	90	(12)
13 Oxford again—logistics—Jan'Come on in!'	102	(7)
14 Concerning surgery	109	(3)
15 Trefan—the last summer—on Welshnessto the magician	112	(6)
16 Casablanca—in the clinic—a stunning thought—made normal—Comrades!—new out of Africa	118	(9)
17 All for fun?—a manner suited—views of life—female sensations—forgetting	127	(10)
18 Problems still—ask a silly question—'one is baffled'—regrets?	137	(7)
19 The human condition—speculationsunder the piano still	144