|
Authors know everything
After a week or so in the soggy company of Storm Babet...
“Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won't feel like watching.”
Embittered American humorist, Fran Lebowitz
|
|
|
|
|
Lord Jim at Home
by Dinah Brooke
Daunt Books
£9.99
|
|
|
|
Not strictly speaking a book of this week – I missed it when it came out earlier this month, and I also missed it when it first came out in 1973. So it has only taken me fifty years to catch up – not so much the hare and the tortoise as the hare and the glacier. Hopefully you can get round to it a little more speedily. Based on a true story, Lord Jim at Home concerns the appalling trajectory of an English wastrel, from a childhood in a gruesome upper-middle class family (plenty of monsters here), to an immersion in the horror and tedium of World War II at sea, and his finally coming up with a disastrous solution to keep funding a life of post-war dissipation. What led to this calamity? Was it the loveless cruelty of his early years? The trauma of the war? Or was his moral code always hopelessly beyond repair? For a book written half a century ago, it feels fresh and modern, and magnificently captures some truly shocking people. Admirers of Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels will love it, and if asking for it in a shop, the author's name is pronounced Diner, not Dee-nah. (I found this out the hard way when interviewing her recently for the next Strong Words).
|
|
The Strong Words Hot List
October's finest new biographies |
|
|
|
|
5 Barry Cryer: Same Time Tomorrow?
by Bob Cryer
Bloomsbury, £20
|
|
The gag-studded biography of a joke machine and comedy writer, one whose lack of on-stage “sparkle” (his word) kept him from the big time, but who achieved towering industry regard for his talent, warmth and kindness. He wrote for everyone, and no name goes undropped here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 Unfinished Woman
by Robyn Davidson
Bloomsbury, £18.99
|
|
Robyn Davidson made her name in the seventies with Tracks, a book describing her 1,700 mile solo trans-Australian crossing with camels. This memoir captures the challenging outback childhood and hippy Sydney years that preceded it, and the bohemian wanderings that followed. As she concludes of our species, "any human head is bedlam, if you care to look."
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 Down the Drain
by Julia Fox
Fourth Estate, £20
|
|
Actress and attention glutton Julia Fox's biggest moment in the spotlight came as one of Kanye West's unfortunate companions, although a fashion sense indifferent to even the most liberal interpretation of modesty keeps the press alert. This memoir describes her 33 years of ultra-havoc (so far) between Italy and New York, including a spell as a teenage dominatrix.
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
by Sly Stone
White Rabbit, £25
|
|
When I was editing Rolling Stone magazine twenty years ago, suggestions to interview Sly Stone were always met with a sad shake of the head. He was living in a van, too far gone to perform or even answer a question. Against some long odds, he recalls – in sharp and colourful detail – a career of spectacular musical accomplishment, high highs and wild lows. A true and likeable original.
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 Every Man For Himself and God Against All
by Werner Herzog
Bodley Head, £25
|
|
Since building himself ski jumps as a child in Bavaria, film director Werner Herzog has never tired of finding out first hand the many ways in which nature is utterly indifferent to human pain and suffering. From trying to sneak into the Congo as a teenager to a stint as a Mexican rodeo clown, and numerous brink-of-disaster film productions in locations such as the Amazon, the Andes and on volcanos, his urge to get close enough to danger to stroke it is unflagging.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Farewell to a prolific author (and enthusiastic Strong Words subscriber)
|
|
|
|
Sad news arrived earlier this month of the death of Anthony Holden, a writer on a panorama of subjects, survivor of countless poker skirmishes on several continents, and ever generous complimenter of Strong Words' endeavours. There are many fine obituaries of him and I thoroughly recommend his memoir, Based on a True Story, that appeared in 2021 (Simon & Schuster, £10.99). It gives the full version of how he fell out in 1988 with our present (at time of writing) king over his biography Charles, which described the then PoW's utter inability to comprehend Diana. It led to the Palace issuing a rare disapproval, and the Express stirring from its coma to ask if Anthony was "the most reviled man in Britain". My favourite book of his is Big Deal (1990, Abacus, £12.99) about trying to make a living by playing poker for a year. His passing has also opened a slot on the Strong Words subscription roster. Anyone wishing to fill it is more than welcome, by following the link towards the bottom of this email.
|
|
|
All the news reports of Norwegian author Jon Fosse winning the Nobel literature prize mention the committee's saying he won it for "his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." As I've never heard of him, what does he say that's so unsayable?
G. Jackson, Liverpool
|
|
I hadn't heard of Jon Fosse either, and the Nobel committee provided no clues as to what they meant by their remarks. Obviously everyone is familiar with a voice saying the unsayable – the one inside their own heads that is never short of an unfashionable opinion or a suggestion best kept under wraps. Quite how Jon Fosse says what others can't, though, is not clear. (Perhaps he could say it again?) If anyone is able to help, please don't hesitate to "give voice" to your thoughts at info@strong-words.co.uk.
|
|
|
In Teju Cole's new novel Tremor, a character states, "Recently I met a man who had a serious interest in hiking. The moment he said so I knew he would have other “interests” as well. And I was right: he was into BDSM." Were others aware of this link between rambling and "interests"?
R. Waters, London W12
|
|
This is the first time I have heard of an enthusiasm for strenuous country walks bearing a strong correlation with some sort of erotic deviancy. I feel you could confidently make the same accusation of any group of people – don't most people have "interests"? Although I have always had the greatest suspicion of cyclists – there's too much Lycra for it to be a coincidence.
|
|
|
If you're striving to persuade others you're used to the trappings of wealth, there is no better guide than Elizabeth Taylor in Roger Lewis' new book Erotic Vagrancy, Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (riverrun, £30). The key, apparently, is to leave as much mess as possible.
"Until she became a patient at the Betty Ford Center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation, in December 1983," he writes, "Taylor had never coped without servants – her housemaids, daily women, gardeners, gardeners’ boys and milkmen; she had never cooked or cleaned, done the laundry, or gone shopping for groceries. She knew nothing of ordinary life (‘I can’t remember a day when I wasn’t famous’), and if her pets fouled the carpets, well, somebody else would deal with the messes. Indeed, she was a nightmare guest or visitor."
Hotels regularly had to replace mattresses and rugs after a Taylor stay, she had to compensate the owner of a house she'd used on location for "liquor spills" and walls "full of grease", and her monkey Matilda would chew the furniture. During one stay at the Beverley Hills Hotel she even "managed to deposit lip-stick smears on the ceilings, which baffled science as the actress, even in high heels, was never taller than five-foot-three."
|
|
|
How to subscribe to Strong Words
|
|
If you're already a subscriber to Strong Words – many thanks, your work here is done. But if you're not and you'd like to be, or you know someone who would really appreciate receiving a lovely, glossy magazine six times a year packed with irresistible suggestions as to what to read next, then head over to the website at strong-words.co.uk. It only costs £40 a year for new subscribers in the UK, and postage is free (there are also tempting overseas rates). If you're at all inclined, please sign up – I love subscribers like you love books! |
|
Got a story you’d like to share? Or a question that's bothering you? Send your gossip, tips, literary sightings and intel to info@strong-words.co.uk
For all advertising enquiries info@strong-words.co.ukPlease share this email with anyone you think might like a weekly shot of lively book recommendations. If you are that person, and would like to sign up, feel free to do so at www.strong-words.co.uk |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
