Alan’s War, while avoiding this pitfall, provides pretty strong evidence for why autobiography is often foolish. As it is narrated by Alan Cope but edited and compiled and recounted by Emanuel Guibert after Cope’s death, we are greeted with a long-lens view of Cope’s life (even if much of the content comes from Cope himself). As with most all of us, Cope in his teens is different from Cope in his twenties and Cope in his thirties is different from Cope in his forties. And so on throughout his life. Alan’s War collects a handful of completely different Alan Copes. If the book was a Blankets-style memoir penned by a twenty-three-year-old Cope, it’s a sure bet that fifty-year-old Cope would reject it entirely. He understands why he was the person he was but also understands that Young Cope could never have imagined Old Cope.
Cope’s life was built of experiences, and the intimate intercourse with those historical meetings and states and phenomena altered him—as experiences always will. I’m

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