Stephen Fry - More Fool Me, A Memoir

‘More Fool Me’ is the third volume of recollections and anecdotes from Mr Stephen Fry; adored quiz person, writer, national treasure, General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, KCB.

Much of the success of a memoir, I think, depends on interesting content, and the ability to follow when shorthand and nicknames are used. Unfortunately for dear Mr Fry, on this occasion both elements work against him. This book covers his life as a media darling, a time of great success and joy for him, but not very exciting for everyone else. His first two volumes tell the story of his childhood and university years, both of which are inherently interesting. However, his time in the eighties and early nineties is little more than a long list of name-checks and endless meals at the Groucho. It is so disappointing, as even Stephen Fry can not pull it off and make it a good read.

It starts well. He writes with warmth about his childhood again, and goes over all the ground covered in the two preceding volumes. He only actually gets down to business on page 69, when he lists all the major establishments in which he has snorted cocaine. Everything prior to this, he reassures the reader on several occasions, can be read in more detail elsewhere.

The next part of the book is a soul-searching analysis of a life maintained in the media whilst filled by a desire to consume large quantities of a Class A prohibited drug. He does this well, and some of his reflection is quite charming. However, he continues to make excuses to the reader that he is working hard not to sound like a luvvie. All that does is make him sound even more of a luvvie.

After another one hundred and fifty pages or more, the anecdotes begin to drift, and it seems like he ran out of time, because spliced on are the pages from his diary from 1993. The diary is a long list of nicknames, details of excessive evenings in London clubs, and stories about people who are only known to their friends in show business. There is a limit to how many ways a person can record evenings of cocaine and vodka and make them at all fun.

What is the reader looking for in book three of Mr Fry’s memoirs? Considering his life and the great successes, something in depth about the wonderful success of ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ would not go amiss. It is only found here in the photographs. Alternatively, some insight into the making of ‘Peter’s Friends’ would also be welcomed, but is absent.

People also want to know about the birth of ‘QI’, but the timeline does not stretch that far. I think it will be testing even the most patient of readers if another volume appears that skates briefly over these successes in the way that this one has done.

Should Stephen Fry be blamed, or is it the fault of the pressure from publishers for a Christmas hit? It is a shame, as he remains the wonderful charming man that he has always been. The chance to record him at his most creative has pretty conclusively been missed – or skipped.

Why do we take photographs?

A few things have happened to me recently that have caused me to think about photographs and our motivation for taking pictures.

People take photographs for all kind of reasons.

The first, and most obvious, is to record a passing event. Photographs of people who have since died are powerful and valuable things – a window into a conclusively closed world. We treasure them, and with good reason. Obviously, video of the same is even more poignant. As technology has progressed, more of our lives are recorded and going through a handful of old photos is becoming a thing of the past. Many people have hundreds and hundreds of photos.

The fact was brought into focus for me recently when a friend died who steadfastly refused to have his photo taken. As a result, there was no great proliferation of his image on social media. I had to settle with my memories of him that were in the mind’s eye. I found that much more comforting. What I also found was that mutual friends told stories about him rather than showed pictures. I can contrast this to the death of a much-loved dog last week. Within a few hours there were dozens of photos of her on social media, many of which I was responsible for posting. It made me think about visual and non-visual memory, and I realised that people are becoming quite impoverished in terms of spoken memories if they do not have photos to rely on.

Digital media had made photos so cheap that they are no longer special. People have forgotten how to stand still and pose for a photo because they no longer have to – the photographer can always take ten more until he or she gets one that is just right. Twenty years ago each film had twenty-four or thirty-six shots, and if you got it wrong it cost money.

Add to that the absence of automatic focus and flash, and you remember the care with which photos were previously taken. This is something that I suspect previous generations might also have noticed, as photos changed from once in a lifetime events created in a studio to snaps taken on a cheap disposable analogue camera. I have my hunch though that without noticing we have entered a new age of photography. Photos are now so ubiquitous, cheap and easy to create that they are starting to lose their value.

My second rumination relates to the audience for our photographs. When I was a child, photographs reached only those who were shown the paper copy. Very rarely, two copies were made so that some could be shared with my grandparents. I realised when my last grandparent died that actually what happened more frequently was that a set of twenty-four photos was halved and shared. Going through photos after her death was a joy, because I saw the other half of the photos from my childhood for the first time.

The audience for photographs only ever widened if you were unfortunate enough to have a relative who had photographs made into slides. You were made to sit and view them in silence. The point about the 1970s slide show that is relevant to today was that the photos were still taken without a view to their audience, which is why it was so boring. The photographer was still taking photos with only himself in mind. Whilst snapping away at some Roman ruins, the boring uncle was not thinking of what would be interesting to a wider audience, only what interested him.

The obvious point here, of course, is the danger of freeing photographs from paper. We used to have complete control over who saw photographs. The recent Cloud debacle shows everyone how little control even the wealthy now have over their photographs. Nude photos were harder to come by when you had to take them to Boots the Chemist to be developed. I think that most people are still worried about this freeing of photography from a physical medium, and technology has outpaced our ability to set limits and social boundaries. I hope we all catch up soon.

Digital photography has caused an explosion of narcissism. If we want to take a thousand photographs of our haircuts, we can – and lots of people do. What is different is that everything can now be shared with a potentially limitless number of people. We can take twenty views of our new kitchen and show them to everybody we know, and many people that we have never met. As an audience, we don’t have to look, but most of us do.

I have now arrived at the Main Part Of The Rant. We have stopped taking photographs for ourselves. When all we had was analogue technology; photos were taken for us, and for our families. At the widest point of broadcast, a copy might be sent to a distant friend, but that was not in the mind of the photographer when the image was captured.

Many people now take photographs to impress contacts on social media. When we gaze through the frame, we are thinking how many people will like our picture, and how cool it will look, and how everyone will like us a little more because we take interesting pictures of cool places. There is a danger for many people that photos are becoming yet another method of impressing people, instead of capturing the passing of our lives.

It was really brought home to me recently when I passed the Tower Of London and saw how many people were taking photographs. I’m not saying they shouldn’t, as it was an impressive sight that deserves recording. But very few people were actually just standing and looking. Maybe I am being too cynical, and the majority were taking photos for themselves. But I suspect that many of the images were being created with a view to how many Facebook ‘likes’ could be garnered….

Whether that is right or wrong is a whole other issue. What I have realised is that I am going to take fewer photos, and think about why I am taking them, and make every one count.

Wallace Stegner: Crossing to Safety (1987)

The life of Wallace Stegner encompassed much of the Twentieth Century, the American Century. He was born in 1909 and so was part of a generation of writers whose work straddled the Second World War, but seemed peculiarly unaffected by the great trauma that war created. His work is either 1930s or 1950s in tone, strangely mid-century.

The novel Crossing to Safety tells the story of two couples whose lives are intertwined and for whom joint experience enriches all concerned. They are white, affluent, College types to differing degrees. They experience the Depression together, and the bounty of the United States. It is a story of open vistas, unspoiled woodland, ample food, large cars and New England privilege. The mastery of Wallace Stegner’s prose, however, is that it is also a story of struggle for academic excellence, illness, poverty and personal industry.

It is narrated by Larry Morgan, who begins life in the university world with no money, and only his wits. It describes his struggle, his love of his new wife Sally, her subsequent illness, and how they cope with it. The parallel lives of Sid and Charity Lang are one of privilege, New England money, generosity and contentment.

The novel follows the four lives until the special four-way friendship is broken by illness, ageing and eventual death. Stegner is superb at presenting snapshots of the characters in different situations and different times of life, all the reminiscence of Larry. It is not all apple pie and beers by the barbeque.

You end up knowing the characters well, and understanding their attitudes to life as it passes. Larry muses on ageing and is not bitter but frustrated at the limitations it puts in his way and in the way of his friends. I found myself wondering how much was based on the author’s own life experiences, and aside from some of the locations that he knew well, it seems that little is actually based on firm reality. It reveals that Stegner was a writer of many gifts, and the foremost among these was such attention to detail that you end up completely convinced by the characters.

Despite the many jumps between the 1930s and early 1970s, one thing that is inescapable is the full stop of death. Even in fiction, time waits for nobody. How Stegner handles this, and his reflection on terminal illness, whilst not the most cheerful reading, are masterful.

This is a book for people who ponder mortality, who are confused by the hand of cards that life deals for us all, and those who fear the end. It is apparent that Stegner did not.

George Harrison: Behind The Locked Door by Graeme Thomson

George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, by Graeme Thomson; Omnibus Press

It is said that meeting your heroes is always a mistake, because they never quite measure up to your expectations. I am glad, after reading this book, that I did not meet George Harrison. He comes across as a much more prickly character than I had previously thought.

This biography suffers from appearing about the same time as Mark Lewisohn’s superb masterwork on all four of The Beatles, All These Years: Tune In. Although only one volume of a proposed three has appeared, Graeme Thomson’s book is thin by comparison. It also does not manage to do what Lewisohn has done in walking the fine line between exhaustive biography and hagiography. Whilst Lewisohn has pulled off the trick admirably, I was left with the impression that Thomson has come down a little too far on the negative side. It is a shame, because in digging deeply into some of the less glamorous and attractive parts of the life of George Harrison, he has done much to tarnish him.

George Harrison was a deeply complicated human being. He spent most of his adult life trying to distance himself from being a Beatle. In doing so, he cut a lot of people out of his life. In this biography, Graeme Thomson repeats this conclusion in every possible way. In doing so, he has also painted a picture of Harrison that is rather skewed. Certainly, he was a private man who guarded his privacy fiercely. But he was also a wonderful friend to many people in all walks of life. A little more reflection on this fact would have created a much more balanced picture of George.

I am suspicious of a biography that has many of the major characters missing. It is apparent from the credits and thanks at the end of the book that neither McCartney, Starr nor Yoko Ono consented to be interviewed. All their quotes are therefore second-hand and subject to editing and interpretation. It also seems that Patti Boyd did not speak to the author. It speaks of a writer having lots of doors closed to him.

There are interesting biographical details that are uncovered – the fact, for example, that the Beatle who comes out of this telling with the most credit is Ringo Starr. That when George Harrison’s time was coming to an end, he was given shelter in a private house in Los Angeles owned by McCartney, to avoid the prying eyes of the world. And the fact that it seems there is good evidence to suggest that George was unfaithful to both of his doting wives. This last piece of information reveals as much about Graeme Thomson’s agenda as about the life of Harrison himself.

There is some warmth. The contented Harrison, writing songs for fun at his Gothic Manor Friar Park. The loving father, who involved his son fully in his music-making. And the fabulous generosity of the man who funded many projects without any desire for recognition.

Largely, though, this is a negative book about a man who gave so much in his fifty-eight years. It dwells too much on the paradoxes in Harrison’s life when there was a great opportunity to dig much more deeply into the spiritual side of his existence. After his death, when his friends met to celebrate his life, they all assumed that they were his best friend. This says far more about him than Graeme Thomson managed. He forgot to mention it.

Distant Neighbors - Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Distant Neighbors: The Letters of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Edited by Chad Wriglesworth, Counterpoint Press

This is a book for serious students of mid-century American writing. It is a collection of letters between the two men from the mid 1970s until the Twenty-First Century. It is a dry and rather academic document, but one full of insight.

Gary Snyder began life as a backwoodsman and logger, and is now a Man of Letters. His impressive gifts have taken him from the stump-farm on which he was raised, first to University, then to an association with the Beat Movement, to Japan, and latterly to a homestead on the San Juan Ridge in the Yuba watershed in California. He is a godfather of the American environmental movement and a considerable figure in anthropological circles. His is an impressive CV which is fleshed out considerably through the letters he has written and received from Berry.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky tobacco farmer who studied in New York City, and returned to the farm that had been the home of his family for four generations. As much as Snyder he firmly believes in the importance of being rooted in place. It is only if we know, love and respect our environment that we can begin to take responsibility for it is his claim. There is no responsibility from people only passing through. Berry, like Snyder, has received the Pulitzer prize for literature.

The letters are a strange mix of the academic and fraternal. The editor has chosen a broad range of letters from each man (slightly more were written by Berry) that illustrate their literary aspirations and pursuits, their concern about farming and logging, and their growing friendship.

The letters at the beginning of the book are the most charming. As a friendship begins there are many small politenesses that are evident. As familiarity builds you can sense the warmth between the two men and their families. Both maintain a cordial air, especially when signing off.

The research is thorough, and there are copious footnotes to accompany the text. What is lacking perhaps is some biographical detail. It is almost as if the editor did not wish to enter the more private areas of the lives of the two men. An example of this is when Snyder’s beloved wife Carole passed away early in the new century. When Wendell Berry makes a passing comment to Snyder’s loss, there is a simple footnote and no more. At that point a biography of Carole would have been fitting. The same is true when Snyder lost his sister.

It is perhaps partly due to the fact that both are private men. Snyder knew celebrity in the 1950s in California and his 1972 Pulitzer Prize for ‘Turtle Island’ thrust him back into the spotlight. In the intervening years he has retreated somewhat and spoken through his writing.

Knowledge of the writing of the two men is necessary to add meaning to much of the book. The Gary Snyder Reader is a good companion to have, and many of the letters caused me to look again at his writing. I know Berry’s work less, and it has prompted me to look deeper, especially into his fiction.

Much of the detail that can be gleaned from the letters relates to the number of appearances the two men have made over the decades; speaking to land institutes, academic audiences and literary enthusiasts. It reveals that a career writing is not easy, and involves many airports and departure lounges, even for those most grounded in the soil. It is a particular paradox to think of Gary Snyder boarding a business flight to New York, or answering an e-mail. The latter is something that Wendell Berry has refused to do: he still writes long-hand, true to his piece in the 1980s about his reluctance to buy a personal computer.

There is a long exchange of letters about belief. Berry is of a Southern Christian upbringing, and Snyder is a Buddhist. The interest lies in the way that the two bounce ideas off each other and the mutual respect that they show. There are few other places in his writing where Snyder comments so sensitively – and expertly – about Christianity.

A lifetime of letters (the first are from a time when both men had turned forty) reveal how lives change as people age. The first letters are full of action and the later ones predictably begin to contain medical reports. More delightfully, the later letters also contain details of expanding families, grandchildren, and the love that both men feel for their families.

This book is a tribute to a great friendship that has blossomed over forty years. It is apparent that both men owe a debt of friendship, too, to Jack Shoemaker, who has been a great champion of the writing of Snyder in particular. If it is an insight into Snyder as a man that you are looking for, his letters to Allen Ginsberg is a better choice. However, this book is full of detail about Snyder and Berry and what great servants of the Earth they have been. Now both in their eighties, it is a great tribute to two men who have done so much to open our eyes to the realities of our planet.

A truly 'world' cup

A truly ‘World’ Cup

In a few weeks the FIFA World Cup will take place in Brazil, and the eyes of the world will turn to South America to follow the fortunes of thirty-two qualifiers. It is the twentieth time that teams have officially gathered for a World Championship, and there will be a huge global television audience, boosted by internet access and media saturation. It is big, big business. An indication of how big is that last time FIFA, the world governing body, produced a seventy-three page document called ‘Television Audience Report’ to analyse in minute detail just how many people watched the finals in South Africa. The main concern of the report is how many people are ‘reached’ by coverage, and consequently how much influence the games have had in furthering the fortunes of the senior partners of FIFA; which include Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony and Visa.

FIFA find it difficult, and financially compromising, when things do not go to plan. They are still baffled as to how the Beautiful Game has failed to make in-roads into India, and has only had limited success in the USA. There is uncomfortable shuffling of paper when politically sensitive issues rear up, such as their refusal to sanction any of their member nations playing against Tibet. Things that do not fit into the big money-making plan are gently and subtly manipulated so that, in time, the problem goes away.

A problem for FIFA is that professional sport is still unpredictable and no matter how careful the organisers try to be to keep everyone happy, mistakes happen. I use the term ‘mistake’ here in the FIFA sense of an event that does not maximise revenue for everyone at the top table. A clear example this time was the European qualification of teams. In the play-off to decide the remaining finalists after the group winners had been decided, Sweden were drawn to play Portugal. It might not seem like an important mistake until you look down the team-sheets of the two countries. Cristiano Ronaldo is Portuguese. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is Swedish. Over two games, the World Cup was bound to lose one of its star players, eliminated before even a ball has been kicked in the final stages. Both players are world stars, and both earn millions through lucrative sponsorship deals. Both raise the status of their national teams and both would grace the finals in Brazil.

Thankfully for everyone concerned, the bigger world star prevailed and the immaculate pectorals of Cristiano Ronaldo will grace the final stages, while poor Zlatan lies on a different beach somewhere, thinking about his next sponsorship deal.

It is not the first time, though, that things did not go quite according to plan. In 1974, when there were only sixteen teams taking part; England, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico and the USSR did not qualify for the finals in West Germany. England, Spain and France all had large television audiences to satisfy. Mexico were the previous hosts. Hungary were a fading former football powerhouse. The USSR were disqualified after a shameful play-off against Chile. They failed to turn up in Santiago after a coup d’état.

Although the 1974 World Cup was meticulously organised by West Germany, and won by the home team, it must have seemed rather flat, especially for PaniniStickers. They had produced a glossy sticker album for the children of Europe, and had to shoe-horn in a special section at the back featuring four stickers from each of the ‘big’ countries who had not qualified.

In subsequent series, FIFA have gradually manipulated the qualification procedures in line with their ‘vision’ for the spread of football across the world. It is unlikely that a major European team will have problems qualifying in future, as thirteen of the thirty-two places on offer go to Europeans. Africa, so often viewed by FIFA as an important market-place, received the finals tournament in 2010 and have five guaranteed qualifiers in 2014. Asia have four or five places; but Oceania with limited population, televisual punch or corporate value to big sponsors, have ‘half’ a place for each World Cup. What that means is that the single qualifier still has to beat an Asian team in an eliminator.

So, in terms of making sure that the best players in the world are seen every four years, FIFA have it about right. It is controlled, and as much as possible predictable. Footballing backwaters are ignored.

The Australian FA became so disillusioned with the system that it withdrew from Oceania qualification and ‘joined’ Asia, to give themselves a better shot at qualification.

The FIFA website makes promising pronouncements about the prospects of teams in the bottom half of its rankings. There are 209 FIFA member associations. Realistically, any from the bottom one hundred could play on forever and never make it to the finals. We will never see San Marino (208^th) against the Turks and Caicos Islands (209^th) in any World Cup.

I think that is a shame.

It is at this point, every four years, that I dust off my plan for a truly ‘world’ cup. It is so different to the current system that I can guarantee that if any FIFA official ever read it, he (for it is always a man) would wince, and have to lie down in a dark room.

My idea, quite simply, is to play the qualification like the FA Cup. You put all the names into a hat, and draw all the teams against each other, irrespective of global status, FIFA Ranking or geographical location.

It would work like this: in the first round, 162 teams are drawn against each other. 81 would be knocked out, leaving another 81 to advance in the competition and meet the other 47 who had been lucky enough to be given a ‘bye’ in the first round. You then have 128 teams, who are drawn again, just like in the FA Cup. You continue until you have whittled it down to 32 or 16 teams, or however many you want to take part in a ‘finals’ tournament in whichever country has bribed FIFA the most heavily to stage it.

The possibility for upset is vast. Brazil and Argentina might be paired against each other in the first round, as might England and Scotland.

Equally, the possibility for excitement is unconfined. Imagine what might happen if Brazil, for example, had to play a one-game eliminator in North Korea. Or if Spain were drawn against Andorra. In a twelve-game group style qualification, as happens now, the wise money would be on Brazil and Spain. But how about in a single game?

There are many very sensible objections to such an unpredictable World Cup. The main problem is travel. How would the stars of Italy find the time to travel to Indonesia? Could it be afforded? To this objection I would simply state that FIFA, in their wisdom, have decided that Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup in desert conditions. Suddenly my idea does not seem quite as silly. Countries from all over the world will be flown into the desert state, which at ridiculous cost will have to build indoor stadia from scratch. Money talks.

The other main objection is one of spectacle. If the major footballing nations were eliminated in football backwaters, would the finals be worth watching? To this I counter that to truly be world champions, a country needs to be able to confidently approach any opposition and prevail. If Spain, the current World Champions, cannot beat Tonga or Andorra or Sierra Leone, can they truly claim to be the best team in the world?