EDITORIAL 

THE SPLENDOURS AND MISERIES OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Some writers turn their noses up at autobiography thinking it a cop-out from the rigours of imaginative fiction. Yet one modern novelist, Jonathan Franzen, insists that all great writing is autobiographical and, for example, there is no more autobiographical writer than Franz Kafka. We know Kafka never turned into an insect but he did devote the whole of his life to exploring his personal struggle. “What is fiction after all” asks Franzen “but a kind of purposeful dreaming?” 

Perhaps celeb culture has given autobiography a bad name. The shelves at Waterstones groan under the heavy load – sometimes so many they pile up on pallets on the floor. But who are these spivs and shysters and why should we be giving them the time of day? Mostly they’re not even the author of the book they’re signing. Yes they can write their names – all joined up too, but have they been exploring their personal struggle or just nattering to some ghost? 

This issue contains two overtly autobiographical pieces, and a few obliquely biographical ones. I know for a fact that Dave Birtwistle has a shed in the Pennines and Tanner’s excursions into Liverpool’s lower depths must be true – nobody could make that stuff up. But what’s David Beckham got that Tom Kilcourse and John Lee haven’t? (Answer using both sides of the A4 sheet provided and add extra pages if required). Becks could kick a ball about, but we’ve all done that. And he had a girlfriend who was caught on camera pleasuring a pig – yis, we’ve all had girlfriends like that too (ie horny sluts). So what great contribution to lit is he making? Answer: none. 

So, my fellow oiks, treasure your life-story – it’s your hardcore, your building material, no matter how mundane it may appear. Proust, for instance, had a very boring life. To him the joyful camaraderie of the workplace was unknown. He only worked half a day in his whole life. He never married or even had a proper girlfriend. Mostly he stayed in gasping, reading and writing or occasionally, for light relief, sticking a hatpin into a rat. Yet from this unlikely material he created the greatest novel of the last century. Would it have been any better if he’d been a film star, a footballer, a detective or a politician? Of course not. It’s not what you’ve lived through that counts, it’s what you make of it. If you were good enough you could write a great novel even if you were deaf and blind and lived in an iron lung. At least you wouldn’t be a cockroach – you’d be writer exploring your predicament. What more d’you want? A knighthood? A horny slut girlfriend? Loadsamoney? I don’t think so. They’d be no help if you simply wanted to write a memorable sentence. 

Ken Clay July  2013

AN ICELANDIC SAGA

Keith Howden 

Birdy, these days my once-a-fortnight
self-elected boozing companion,
Thursdays from eight to ten (his time
is limited) being, I think,
the day they let him out, told me again
his sufferings from trench foot
contracted downing Stukas. I don't believe,
white-haired and shaking a bit
(delirium tremens is why he's there,
I fancy) born about nineteen six,
he saw much fighting.  Birdy says
he likes life's little ironies. Tonight
he told me how his fat brother-in-law,
once Headmaster of a University,
signed on as trawlerman in some
fish-smelling and mysterious port
lurking his mind, his tub Pea Green
or Sea Green, uncertain, her skipper
bonkers who, two days out of port sets course
for icebergs, telling a creaking tannoy
his long-considered wish to bring
penguins to true religion. Bonkers.
Nobody bothered. At the first iceberg runs
his boat alongside, dressed in black
and white, arms flapping a crucifix
and jumps onto the ice. Not much
you can do for that sort, Birdy says,
although they brought him quacking back
in a strait-jacket. It's a story
Birdy loves telling of this lunatic
dressed up believing he's the first
to crack penguin vocabulary. And that's
what education does. It's all a plot.
How else explain some buggers
get the good jobs when anyone
can see they're loonies?  And by now,
it's time to go, his little freedom
limited.  Time Gentlemen. That Charge
Nurse wants him. But at the door he winks
life's little ironies.  Does nobody
in the whole trawler business tell them
no penguins in the Arctic, only
bloody great polar bears .....