Paul Bryant's review of This Sporting Life (original) (raw)

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This Sporting Life by David Storey

This Sporting Life
by

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I ran into Arthur Machin in a pub in Rotherham one night in 1964.

I bought him a pint and said “Arthur, I’m really sorry but I can’t finish your book.”

It took some nerve. I mean, it’s well known he has a violent streak and he’s a big bloke. Could knock me right through the window and never even notice.

He looked down at me and said “Oh and why is that then?” He was staring gloomily into the mid distance. He did a lot of that. Along with slowly drinking a pint of beer. And also fast drinking a pint of beer.

“Well,” I said, “it’s all about a tough uneducated working class lad who has only one ticket out of his hopeless grim Northern English slough of despond, his two fisted aggression and enormous bulk. So he gets to be a local rugby star.”

“Well, I know that, it’s my story. It’s a true story. What was wrong with it?”

“Well, yes Arthur, I know it’s all true, but…. sorry to say your voice got on my nerves. All that first person noticing. People just don’t notice as much as that. I could take any page … here for instance :
She got off her knees and lifted a large bowl of dough on to the table. The smell of it leavening filled the room. She dusted the baking board with flour and pulled the dough out of the earthenware bowl and began to cut it."

“Well, that’s exactly what happened.”

“Ok here’s another bit – I dropped off the bus… I got off half-way up the hill to Primstone, just when the lights were pricking the valley, making it bleed with its slow night glow. I mean, really, making it bleed. What kind of talk is that from an uneducated lout? "

“Well, okay, I admit David Storey made me put that stuff in. I didn’t want to. I never talk like that.”

“Ah, that makes more sense."

“He said all those London types would love it, and he wasn’t wrong. They like working class bruisers to have an unexpected poetic side. Look at Mellors the gamekeeper in D H Lawrence’s notorious 1928 novel _Lady Chatterley’s Lover._”

This conversation was going nowhere. I scrabbled around for something else to day.

“Oh by the way, Arthur,” I said. “Here’s something you might find interesting. You know that actor who plays you in the movie?”

“Yes - Richard Harris – playing me propelled this brooding young actor into a well-deserved international career.”

“Yes … you won’t know this but he gets to be best friends with a songwriter called Jimmy Webb in a couple of years and this Webb guy persuades him to record a whole album of his songs, one of which is a seven minute elaborate kitsch masterpiece called “Macarthur Park” that many people in future decades think of as the worst record ever made.”

“Wait a minute, how do you know that then ?”

“I come from the future, Arthur, where there are way too many highly unlikely first person narrators just like you.” I finished my pint and said. “I’m sorry I didn’t like your book, no hard feelings. And don’t tell anybody, but “Macarthur Park” is one of my favourite records.”

I came away from my chat with Arthur thinking I probably needed to sign up for a suspension of disbelief training course.

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Reading Progress

November 5, 2018 – Shelved

June 14, 2020 –Started Reading

June 20, 2020 – Shelved as:novels

June 20, 2020 –Finished Reading

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