by John Crace
All Jaguar’s problems stem from the days when the communists took over the shop floor at British Leyland. If the government had just had the nerve to have every striker executed in front of his family, then we wouldn’t be depending on an Indian manufacturer to bail the brand out now. Just what we need: An It Ain’t Half Hot Mum advertising campaign. I’d rather have a sedan chair carried by four greased Egyptians.
Who on earth do you know who actually washes their car? Other than the homosexuals of Gerrards Cross? The whole point of a car is that you should drive it aggressively off road, spilling dirt and gravel over the bunny huggers who are traipsing around National Trust properties, while nibbling on their falafel and ciabatta sandwiches. Which brings me to the Renault Clio. If you’re the sort of limp-wristed L’Oreal man who spends hours in the gym doing botty-clenching exercises, then you’re going to love this. Me? I’d rather get my local village idiot, Dave, to clean my rims!
So cars are making all the polar bears drown, are they? Oh, diddums. If they spent less time posing for David Attenborough and more time learning to swim, they’d be fine. Which brings me to the eight-seater Mitsubishi Outlander. The ramblists say cars like this are destroying the planet, when it’s their nasty little Priuses that are really doing the damage. Not that global warming is a reality for anyone but a few scaremongering communists who want us all to eat nettles and live in middens. How else am I going to get my kids to school than in a 4x4? You can’t expect me to use a bus, as the drivers are always out on strike.
As a major celebrity I get photographed countless times a day – all too often with a woman who isn’t my wife. All speed cameras should be burned, preferably using traffic wardens, council officials and gays as lighter fuel. Which brings me to the Porsche Cayenne, the car with the most pointless rear seat ever made. So small it can’t even fit the 8-inch Hammond, a man who gives dwarves a bad name. Talking of which, how come the over coiffed homosexualist had his crash on the one day in the century when the entire NHS wasn’t on strike?
What is the point of a bicyclist? Answer: to die. The only reason any beardy vegetarian or lesbian gets on a bike is because they secretly want to commit suicide. Which is fine by me. I want them all to die, too. The world would be a much better place without them. But what I don’t want them doing is holding me up and tempting me into doing their dirty work for them. If you haven’t got the balls to phone Dignitas, then don’t make me late for dinner at the Ivy by forcing me to crush you under my front wheels. So run along and get a gun and top yourselves in private, losers.
Thanks to the utterly useless Gordon Brown, we’re apparently all going to be so broke we’ll have to drive a Fiat 500. Frankly, I’d rather die. Who wants a car that can only kill its occupants? Which brings me on to Sarah Brown. Did she look at Gordon before marrying him? I mean, she’s not much of a looker, but she didn’t need to stoop that low. Why is every politician’s wife – with the exception of the divine Samantha Cameron – such a munter? Talking of which, the reversing mirror in the Range Rover allowed me to look right up Sam’s skirt.
Lots of people write in to me asking if Mays is ‘a bachelor’. What I can say is that he is right at home in the Jean-Claude ‘Durz ma bum look beeg in zis’ Citroën Diane. As for me I’m staying with my Mercedes XLR-BIGCOCK. Fritz may have made a few minor errors with the Poles in the war, but he was dead right about the communist workshy scum. Thank God for my mate Dave. Boxing Day as per usual?
Digested read, digested: Car crash of a career.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
Experience by Martin Amis (2000)
I write both to commemorate my father and to set the record straight. This will involve me in the indulgence of certain bad habits. Name dropping is one of them. But I’ve been indulging in this, in a way, ever since I first said, ‘Mart’.
There will be no point-scoring, valued reader, though if you’re reading this, Jules, I’d like to say that it was you who turned away from me, not I who turned away from you. So you can fuck right off for a start. And as for you, Thersites Eric, who demeaned and defiled our family after Kingsley’s death, I’ll deal with you and the toiling small-holders of the Fourth Estate in a 10-page appendix.
Rather, this is the journey through the unconscious, the ‘un’ conscious, the un, of how the fledgling Osric became Hamlet, Prince of Westbourne Grove. It is here in the world of un, that murky novelist’s landscape, where experience is collected, connections are made and communion is Freely given and received. Here we will find the pain schedule, the climacteric collision of the missing and the lost, the Delilahs and the Lucys, and the loves that come and go. There is no morality. What must be, must be. All we can do is rage and hurt and pay the bill.
It is the late 1970s. The gross of condoms that Kingsley gave me and Phillip have long since been used. Many times over. I am looking at a photo of a two-year-old girl, another version of myself.
‘Do you think she might be mine,’ I asked my mother.
‘Definitely.’
‘What shall I do?’
‘Nothing.’
But I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t see her or take an interest in her, obviously. No, I did something more profound and important. I wrote about her. In scribendo veritas. A careful reading of my novels, from the publication of Success in 1978 onwards, will reveal a stream of lost or wandering and putative or fugitive fathers. So Delilah and I were always together, our inner-selves linked in un-ness, un-needing of a corporeal presence.
The mid-90s were my lurid years, using lurid strictly according to the condensed epic poem of the Fowlers’ article in the COD. A mid-life crisis is critical in a man; a man who reaches his forties without one has no concept of the continuum of being. The beginnings and the endings. And all things must end. My marriage to Antonia was ending, my teeth had prematurely resigned and Kingsley was creeping to his reluctant adieu. Only Saul, the world’s other great novelist, could truly comfort.
But in the endings there are also joys. There is you, Isabel, and Delilah, who have come back to me. Immenso giubilo. I worried that you and the boys would not get on. Ridiculous. And even with no genetic barrier between me and my own mortality, there is a freedom in being orphaned. My tennis has got much, much better since Kingsley died. There. My experience is told. Now there is the living to be done.
Digested read, digested: Brilliantly written, highly selective, episodic portrayal of a life well-thought but only half felt.
Things My Mother Never Told Me
by Blake Morrison (2002)
Hark! Dost the gentle wheezing from my mother’s chest grow ever softer?
Is that her spirit passing now or has it passed long since?
Still her breath and let it ne’er be said
I missed a chance to be a poet of the dead
The phone rings. It’s the nursing home to say my mother’s end is nigh. We have been here before, so many false goodbyes, that I find myself wondering whether I have time to finish a review. But duty – such a mean-spirited word, but surely none else will do – forces me out the house. I make it to her bedside with just 40 minutes to spare.
Later that evening, my sister Gill and I go to our mother’s home. We drink too much and row as orphans often do.
‘Mam always loved me more than you,’ pouts Gill.
‘Well I’m going to write a book about her,’ I reply. ‘Then we’ll see who the public thinks loved her more.’
Looking through my mother’s possessions, I am struck by how little I knew of her. Unlike my father who loved attention and would have adored my bestselling book about him, my mother was a shadowy, private figure who liked nothing more than not to be noticed. So obviously she would have hated the idea of this book; but that should not stop me, I thought. Would William Leith fail to exploit his family for a large cheque? Of course not. And am I not a man of equal sensitivity and depth?
Why did my mother not tell me she had so many siblings? Was she ashamed of them and of her roots?
Or was she merely worried that if I discovered I had so many relations I would write about them, too?
I feel guilty reading through my parents’ love letters. Have I mentioned how guilty I feel about invading their privacy? See how my father refuses to call her Agnes, or even Gennie. ‘I will call you Kim,’ he says, and she accepts it.
There are times in their courtship when their love seems to be waning and I feel my very existence coming into doubt. But of course I was, so even a few literary stylistic tics cannot generate much excitement in the story. I know as little of my mother now as when I started. She let my father walk all over her and now she’s let me do the same.
Digested read, digested: Attention all Morrisons. If you value your privacy don’t even think of dying before Blake.
A Round-Heeled Woman
by Jane Juska (2003)
My teeth are not as sparkling as they used to be, and what was once firm is now loose. But all things considered I look good. I like men’s bums and penises. At 67 years old, I am what you might call an easy lay.
’Twas not always so. In the fall of 1999 I was watching a French art house movie, when I reflected both on how little sex I’d had over the past 30 years and how unfortunate it was that I had never been published. I resolved to do something about it by placing an advert in the New York Review of Books.
I took my time composing the ad before settling on it. ‘Before I turn 67 next March, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.’ I thought hard about mentioning Trollope as it added $30 to the cost, but I reckoned it would establish me as an intellectual and I would be more likely to sell the book. After all, no one would publish a book about geriatric sex among the lower orders.
Over the coming weeks, I received 63 replies, which I divided into yes, no and maybe. Only those from people on life-support machines or with little sense of literary appreciation made the no pile.
My first meeting in down-town San Francisco with Danny was not a success. He was rude and I told him so. My next was with Jonah, who flew in from the east coast to spend the weekend with me. He poured the champagne and I could feel myself get wet. He thrust himself inside me and I came for the first and last time. I sensed his withdrawal, his reluctance to touch me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘I need a paper bag.’
‘Why?’
‘In case yours falls off.’
Worst of all, he stole my champagne flutes. With two strikeouts you would have thought I might have called a halt. But, as my therapist reminded me, I had a book to write, which is why I am now going to bore you with a load of details about my family life that you can’t possibly want to know.
Fifty pages later I arrived in New York to see Robert. He was old, slightly decrepit, but formidably literate. I loved him intensely, though he didn’t want me and rejected physical intimacy. I took time out to see Sidney, instead.
‘Take my cock,’ he said. I did as he asked, enjoying the power, even though his penis was slightly sub-standard.
Matt proved enigmatic, refusing to meet me, though I shall be forever grateful for his introduction to the Berg Collection. John talked dirty beautifully.
‘Margaret Fuller.’
‘Atwood.’
‘Roth.’
‘Updike.’ We collapsed in a mutual orgasm on the last syllable. He then told me about his suspected liver cancer.
Graham was just in his mid-30s, though he adored Willa Cather. ‘I’ve got to have you,’ he said. He’s arriving next week. I, meanwhile, have already arrived.
Digested read, digested: Shagging for New England.
Broken Music
by Sting (2003)
Rio 1987. It’s the weekend before I’m due to play the world’s biggest ever gig, and Trudie and I are being driven deep into the rainforest to partake of the sacred ayahuasca. I have momentary misgivings and picture the negative headlines. Trudie reassures me and gulps the potion. I do likewise. I feel violently sick and then my mind fills with strange hallucinations: the first world war, my mother groping another man in an alley, my father’s look of hurt, my alienated childhood. And when I come to, I have just one thought. All you need is love. Deep.
* * *
This is not intended to be a straightforward autobiography. Rather it will be like my music: a series of atavistic, yet profound and moving sounds that combine to create something utterly predictable and dull.
I was born in the north-east. My father was a milkman and my mother felt constrained by the routine of their lives.
‘Oi, Gordon help your mum with the shopping,’ my father barked.
‘My name’s Sting.’
‘Next you’ll be telling us you think you can sing.’
‘We are a family cloistered in silence,’ I replied smugly.
I was far more intelligent than all my friends, and their resentment fuelled my inner sense of loneliness. My search for understanding drew me further into my music, and I remember hearing the Beatles for the first time and thinking that one day they might even be nearly as influential as me.
Alone in my bedroom at home, I lovingly practised on an old acoustic guitar, until there was no tune I hadn’t mastered. With my talents it was hard to know what instrument to play. I found myself drawn to the understated, yet more complex, demands of the bass.
My accomplishments rapidly brought me to the attention of all the musicians at the Newcastle YMCA and I played in a series of bands in the early 70s that didn’t get the credit they deserved.
Naturally there were many women drawn to my presence – Megan and Deborah to name two – but it was the actress Frances Tomelty I chose to bless with marriage. Until I was famous, of course, when I left her for Trudie. But Trudie did look exactly like Deborah who had died, so there was a cosmic reason for us coming together.
I was eventually invited down to London to practise with a drummer called Stewart Copeland. He was extremely impressed with me, though he was later rather annoyed that our first album contained many more of my songs than his. As the Police we became the most famous band in the world, and then I split it up, as I had always known I would, because I needed to do my own thing. And for no good reason I’m going to stop here.
Digested read, digested: The Tantric autobiography – goes on way too long and is only of interest to the writer.
Chronicles, Volume 1
by Bob Dylan (2004)
Lou Levy, top man at Leeds Music Publishing, took me up in a taxi to West 70th Street. Outside the wind was blowing.
‘Columbia have high hopes for you,’ he said.
I’d met John Hammond at Columbia the previous week.
‘Howdya get to town?’ he asked.
‘Jumped a freight train.’
It was pure hokum. But who wants truth, when you can buy the dream?
I was staying in The Village with Ray Van Ronk. Outside the wind was blowing. Ray was like a wolf, living like he was hiding out. It was said that the second world war spelled the end of the Age of Enlightenment, but I wouldn’t have known it. I was still in it. I’d read the stuff. Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke ... it was like I knew those guys.
I usually started a book at the middle. It was like I was looking for the education I never got. Thucydides, Gogol, Faulkner. They were like a freeway to my mind.
I wanted to cut a record. But not a 45. I went down to play a song for Woody Guthrie. ‘You brought that song to life,’ he said.
I’d been in a motorcycle accident. I just wanted out of the rat race. Journalists, promoters, fans: they were all calling me the tortured conscience of America. I never planned to be an icon. I was just a singer writing songs that made some kind of sense to me. Outside the wind was blowing.
People told me what my lyrics meant. It was news to me. One album was supposedly intensely autobiographical. Let them think so. I knew it was based on a bunch of Chekhov short stories. I just wanted to escape with my wife and rai
se my kids like any other American.
I was on tour with Tom Petty, but I felt I was going through the motions. I couldn’t connect with my songs or find a voice. I’m gonna retire at the end of this, I thought. I’m burnt out.
My manager told me to take time out to rehearse with the Grateful Dead, but I had reached the point when I opened my mouth and nothing came out. The terror was overwhelming, but then, from nowhere, a sound emerged. It wasn’t a pretty sound, but it was one I recognised. My songs had come back to me.
I was having lunch with Bonio. We looked deep into each other’s reflector shades and liked what we saw.
‘God wants you to record with Daniel Lanois,’ he said.
It was the first Danny had heard of it, but we started to lay some tracks. Outside the wind was blowing. But we stitched and pressed and packed and drove.
John Pankake told me I was trying to be too much like Woody Guthrie. I changed my style. You’re now trying to be too much like Robert Johnson. The folk music scene was a paradise, and like Adam I had to leave.
Digested read, digested: The answers are still blowing in the wind.
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl
by Belle de Jour (2005)
The first thing you should know is that I am a whore. Prostitution is steady work. I open my legs. And then I close them. It beats working in an office. After leaving university, I applied for a number of jobs that I never got and watched my savings steadily dwindle. So when a friend gave me the phone number of a madam, I decided to become a call girl. Like you do. And that’s really all there is to me, but since I’ve been overpaid to write a book I’d better witter on.