Number 87 - Wrestliana - Toby Litt

 

Toby Litt is a bit of a literary chameleon. He never seems to write in the same genre twice. he also seems to be equally adept whether he's writing a science fiction epic Journey into Space, or chick-lit, or hard boiled crime. You're never quite sure what you're going to get from a Litt novel. His most recent two (Notes from a Young gentleman and Patience - both reviewed on this blog) were particularly experimental.

This one is very straightforward in prose style as it's a biography of his great great great Grandad - William Litt, a celebrated wrestler in Cumbria in the early 1800's and a slightly less celebrated writer and poet.

This being non-fiction, it doesn't fit into the A-Z he's been building with his other books.

In addition to telling us about his great etc grandfather, he tells us a lot about himself, his own family, and his process of learning about his ancestor - the effect this had on him as a person.

He explores the meaning of masculinity then and now, the importance of being a man and the meaning of fatherhood.

He starts by telling us about his own father, and how it was his father's wish for him to write this book.  One of my favorite lines in the book appears here when he describes his father as having reached the age where "standing up from a chair is a paragraph, not a sentence". That's quietly heartbreakng as well as incredibly evocative of the fragility of age.

William Litt won over 200 belts in Cumberland & Westmoreland wrestling and wrote one of the first sports manuals - a treatise on the sport of wrestling.  He was very likely a smuggler in his younger days, but after his success in the wrestling ring, he eventually fell foul of a local lord and emigrated to Canada where he died aged 62.

In the course of his research, Toby Litt faces up to his own insecurities. How does he compare as a man to his ancestor, even to his own father?  How do his talents as a father compare? And what does fatherhood mean?

Non-fiction is not normally my genre to read in - book 87 this year and this is the first pure non-fiction so far. But this was fascinating throughout, disarmingly honest and genuinely moving in places.  All the moreso for being true.

The Lowther family get mentioned frequently as playing pivotal roles in William's life.  This is particularly interesting to me because my own Great Grandfather was a lowther, quite possibly from Cumbria... I will admit that's not something to keep many people outside of my immediate family engrossed in the book, but it certainly helped me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Toby's ancestor is a genuine character, and Toby himself comes across as a genuinely nice guy, somewhat in envy of old William's earlier exploits. It's clear that this book was a labour of love and that comes shining through the page.  What could have been the equivalent of someone gettng the photo album out is turned into an engrossing history of a remarkable man. Through the power of prose, Toby has wrestled his ancestor onto the page, and quite definitvely won this round.

This is available through Galley Beggar Press

2020 - Number 1 - Patience - Toby Litt

My first book of 2020, and it's a good one I'm pleased to announce.

I've been reading Toby Litt ever since I needed a third book to round off a threee for two and picked up a copy of Corpsing at semi-random in Waterstones way back in the year 2000.  It's safe to say I'll give anything he writes a try.  He's a very very talented author and not scared to take risks.

He has an ongoing project to work his way through the alphanet with his book titles.  O seems to be conspicuous by its absence sadly, but P is here in a simplistically beautiful bound edition from Galley Beggar Press.  Even the packaging this came in was extraordinary. Inside the box it was wrapped in black crepe paper and felt like a  real luxury item to open. GBP are certainly a good press to order from - they really take pride in their products.

Which means the quality of the writing is more than likely to be very good indeed.  Why go to that sort of effort for anything less than sublime writing.

And that's what we have in this book.  Toby Litt has excelled himself with thia one.

It tells the story of Elliott - a young boy confined to a wheelchair and unable to communicate except though grunts, gestures with his eyes and slight nods. He spends most of his days either parked in front of a window or in front of a white wall. He lives in a home run by nuns, his only contact with his parents is Christmas and birthday cards which are his main method for marking the passage of time.

Despite being stuck in his chair and unable to communicate, he is astoundingly intelligent.  He notices everything. He knows how one of his fellow patients is feeling by the colour of her knees. There's a desperate loneliness inside him though. When a new patient arrives, Jim, he feels he's found his soulmate.  Jim is blind and dumb though.  How can they learn to communiate? How can they ever
be friends and have fun?

The style of writing in this book is adventurous to say the least and grammar takes a back seat and every paragraph is one very long continuous sentence often run on into each other with no punctuation marks in sight not a comma not a full stop or colon or semi colon or anything just a blinding whirl of words where we the readers have to pick and choose our own rhythm and rhyme and reason and follow his stream of consiousness which helps place us squarely inside the head of young Elliott as he tells us of his days and his feelings and his hopes and fears.

And it works.  It works amazingly well.  It needs concentration, but I found i would hit the flow and internal rhythms of the language inside of a page and then I found it almost impossible to put down.

Elliott is a truly sympatheitic creation.  I found myself laughing and crying in equal amounts in this book. I won't reveal how a boy with cystic fybrosis, unable to do anything but grunt manages to communiacte and befriend a blind and dumb friend, but it is genius.  I nearly cheered when they worked out their communication method, as well as wiping a small tear away.

Despite the fact that you could argue very little happensd in this book (it starts with a multi page description of a whitewashed wall)  this is a compelling read, truly emotional and life affirming. 

As much as I've loved the rest of Litt's books, and three of his have hovered in my top ten for many years now - Hospital, Journey into Space and deadkidsongs - I may now have a new favourite.

easy 9/10 maybe more...