Moab is my Washpot - autobiography by Stephen Fry - review

 

Sue's Reviews > Moab Is My Washpot

bookshelves: might-read-again, non-fiction, funny, biog-memoir

Four Stars - I don't know why only three of them appear below.

Stephen Fry is funny and rude, clever and incredibly knowledgeable. I know who he is, of course I do. He’s entertained me on the telly for three decades, but did I want to read his autobiography? Not especially, I don’t read that many biographies except of the artists I’m researching.

Stephen Fry is funny and rude, clever and incredibly knowledgeable. I know who he is, of course I do. He’s entertained me on the telly for three decades, but did I want to read his autobiography? Not especially, I don’t really read biographies except of the artists I’m researching.

However when I saw this salmon pink paperback on a bookseller’s shelf, I bought it for the cover. I might well have bought it even if I was quite unfamiliar with Stephen Fry and despite the obscure title. Who is Moab, why does he/she/they matter? And what in heaven or hell is a Washpot? Yes I guessed the reference was from the Old Testament, but I had no intention of re-reading that tome to find out.

My main reason for the purchase was because the cover was largely filled with the monstrous, wise, preposterously ugly but somehow charming visage of a bull elephant seal, with a proportionately tiny blackbird staring up his bulbous nose. An elephant seal, Lain name Mirounga angustirostris - there's my one bit of erudition. As a child I had seen one in Berlin Zoo, as far as I know Stephen never visited Berlin in his childhood. So why an elephant seal? Just why?

The autobiography encompasses the first 20 years of Fry’s life and no elephant seals are involved. It’s an intense, highly personal, self-deprecating book. He writes an eruditely meandering – or maybe I mean meanderingly erudite – and excruciatingly honest story.

He presents us with his family, who he basically loves but, especially as a teenager, refuses to get on with and who love him but find him often hard to comprehend. We see him in middle-class boarding schools, and how he coped with school life, not always well or honestly but mostly he coped, by using his wits to dodge the system and outwit authority. And we see his love life as his sexuality begins to emerge.

I did enjoy Stephen's book, it’s poignant, scathing, funny and engrossing, occasionally self indulgent bit I forgive him. I skimmed here and there, mostly through the meanderingly erudite sections. I don’t have the advantage of his classical education, if it is an advantage. The Washpot is mentioned in the afterword, as a metaphorical container for the author’s dirty linen, and I believe Moab was a sinner. But the vast elephant seal, I still have no idea because it looks nothing like him!

Will I read it again? I might , but probably only after I’ve read what comes in the next volume.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan - review

I was disappointed reading Amsterdam (reviewed in March), how the hell did that win the Booker Prize? I thought I'd better try a different Ian McEwan book, to see if he was still one of my favourite authors or if I should demote him. I went shopping, came home with The Innocent, written in 1990 but set in the mid 1950's.


The Innocent has been published with a number of different covers, trust me to buy the least interesting (the one on the right). Book covers are important but in this case had no influence on me, I was buying for the author.


It's sort of an espionage story, set in divided West Berlin during the 1950's. I was there as a teen-ager some time later so I decided I had to read this particular book. The setting is pretty real, a city still struggling to recover from the second world war, whilst suffering under the domination of the cold war. Although set before the Berlin wall was built, it felt familiar enough, I'd seen the check-points, the bomb sites. The main character is Leonard, a GPO technician seconded to work on a top secret project in the American sector of the city. I won't tell the story, impossible without spoilers.

The Innocent is very well written, as all McEwan's books are, he's a professional in every sense. The narrative is tense, a very good story. It does take a bit of digesting... hmm.  Maybe digesting is the wrong word. Is it a good read? Oh yes, definitely but maybe don't read the second half just after a large meal. 

Has it restored my faith in the author? Yes, it has. Although a very different story it takes me back to his first book, The Cement Garden which was also about innocence.

Reading Habits Regained

My reading habits have changed drastically over the past ten/fifteen years or so and I 'm trying to put my finger on exactly why. I used to live for books, I could read novels at the rate of ten or a dozen every month - as a teenager it was probably double that, I read my way through the entire science-fiction sections of two public libraries before I found real boys were more engaging than robots and dystopias...but what teenagers do is a different story.

Over the past five-seven years my novel reading fell to about zero. I'm trying to rectify this. January  illnesses (mine and another's) kept me largely indoors, so I've begun to make a conscious effort to get off facebook, get off the news sites, get off-screen entirely (if briefly) and to read fiction - read actual books made of paper. I've got enough of them, what's the point of keeping them if I don't read?

Found I still like Barbara Vine, The House of Stairs was completely compelling, finished it at three in the morning then couldn't sleep. Come February I had to travel north, a long train journey there and back to see how far it is - just as far as I remembered but I can read on trains.

I actually bought a new novel, Gail Honeyman's prizewinning Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, expecting a Bridget Jones type scenario and finding something better, darker and much more unexpected. If I get around to putting it into my Goodreads listings it will go onto my 'might-read-again' shelf. It's currently sitting on a bedside table in a place too far away to care.

So back to the south, back to Barbara Vine.

Unsuitable Authors beginning with P - Terry Pratchett's 'Witches Abroad'.

The witches, Esme Weatherwax, Gytha Ogg and Magrat Garlik, were the first Discworld triple act created by Terry Pratchett. Witches have to come in threes. They are powerful women who know that actual magic should be used sparingly and mostly they don't need it. Granny Weatherwax can control most situations with a look, Nanny Ogg controls with tea and blackmail and Ms Garlik does her best with herbs or crystals or whatever is the latest craze.

In 'Witches Abroad' they have to leave their comfortable(ish) homes in rural Lancre and travel abroad to sort out a fellow witch who has an urge to bring order to the city of Genua by imposing the predictability of fairy-tales on the unsuspecting populace - Emberella has to marry the prince, even though he's a spoilt, snivelling runt. Abroad is not a place that Granny Weatherwax approves of, but "Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is." So they have to get close to see the detail, not just the mass, and find out what's actually going on.

The witches are amongst my favourite of Pratchett's creations. He enthusiastically wrote any number of great female characters into the Discworld, they were merely the first. He takes stereotypes, defys and builds on them to create full-blooded, comic characters. Needless to say the book is very funny and the dialogue between the witches is the basis of much of the humour.

My copy of this book is the Corgi edition of 1992, which was when I first read it, and has the original Josh Kirby cover. The later editions look very dull by comparison.
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Unsuitable Authors beginning with E; Ben Elton - 'High Society'

Ben Elton does write well, although his novels can seem similar to his stand up performances in that he is an excellent ranter in both contexts. And my spellchecker doesn't like the word 'ranter' - good! Spellcheckers need to be dully conventional, staid even. Novelists mustn't be staid and that's certainly not a term applicable to Ben Elton.

High Society was published in 2002
This is Ben Elton's novel about the illegal drugs trade and how to defeat it. The story is hardly staid, it has some graphic detail, some very graphic language and some excellent rants, once you get used to the idea that this is how the book is written.

High Society charts the course of a backbench MP who wants to take on and destroy the illegal drugs traders by making all drugs legal. It illustrates the problems created by drugs with the stories of two addicts, contrasting the lives of a successful pop star and a young runaway. Needless to say, nearly everything which can go wrong for every single character does go wrong and the author's central stand of the novel, the drugs bill, fails disastrously, but there is an almost happy ending, for a couple of people.

Ben Elton has been sneered at lately, as a former alternative comedian who has sold out, but High Society shows that, in 2002 at least, his ideas were as radical as ever.

In case you're wondering why he is 'Unsuitable,' my benchmark is what my grandmother would have considered unsuitable. It's not my judgement.

Unsuitable Authors - where to start?

First I have to say that I don't regard any authors as 'unsuitable'. The word was applied, by certain adults, to some authors and types of reading matter when I was a teenager. I was addicted to reading and could get through four or five novels a week, on top of my school reading. I took delight in reading anything, especially books not aimed at teenage girls. I also took delight in reading books that I knew would horrify a certain family member. I read everything, but especially science fiction - I began with father's copy of John Wyndham's 'Day of the Triffids' and was hooked. The local library in Cheriton ran out of sci-fi, I read their resources dry! I had to get a bus to Folkestone library for my weekly fix of robots, dystopias and space opera. 

My parents were not the problem, they both read liberally, newspapers, magazines and books of all kinds were left around the house, neither of them ever told me I shouldn't read a particular book. When I was nine I picked up a book called 'Naked Under Capricorn' (by Olaf Ruhen) which was left lying around. Obviously, I was pruriently attracted by the word 'naked,' and by the nude on the cover, but the book seemed to be just about about a man wandering in the Australian desert and I soon got bored.


Instead I began reading Gerald Durrell's books, beginning with 'The Bafut Beagles,' about his explorations and 'encounters with animals', which included some mildly blue humour and innuendo, much  drunkenness and teaching monkeys to smoke. Apart from the hilarity of the drunken scene where the Fon of Bafut and his many wives danced the conga with Durrell, most of the 'unsuitable' content went right over my head. I just loved the animals, Durrell's wonderful sense of humour and his stories of finding and caring for his creatures. However these were not quite the first 'unsuitable', non-children's books I read.

The very first was probably my father's medical dictionary - author/editor lost in the mists of time - which I first dipped into when I was about seven and understood little of, but I was fascinated by the illustrations. In the centre of the book were outline figures of a man and a woman overlaid with transparent pages which you could slowly turn to reveal bones, blood vessels, muscles, internal organs and on the outside their very pink and hairless (apart from on their heads) skin. Despite this adult nudity the book wasn't hidden away from us under-ten's.

But when my mother's mother came to stay, things were different. Books were tidied away, papers and magazines containing anything which she disliked were put into the dustbin as soon as she could get away with it, under the guise of 'tidying up.' Reading was a battle when she was around. I shouldn't read in the evenings, it would ruin my eyes. I shouldn't read at the table, it was rude. I shouldn't read in the daytime, I should be outside getting fresh air. I shouldn't read in bed, I should go to sleep.

My grandmother was from earlier times when young people were told how not to speak, what not to wear, what not to read and probably who not to marry. Everything was proscribed. She would probably have forbidden me from reading any of the books and authors I've mentioned, if she was in charge. I didn't understand her because I remember she helped me to learn to read when I was a lot younger. But when I was fifteen she invaded my bedroom while I was at school, went through my wardrobe and binned all my NME's, rock and fan  magazines and posters. I had bought them all with my own money and I was more than angry, I felt violated.

I have detested censorship ever since, there are no unsuitable authors! This blog listing is to illustrate how much tastes, social mores and literary sensibilities have changed, and are still changing, since my grandmother grew up in the Edwardian era.

Unsuitable authors beginning with M; Alistair Maclean's HMS Ulysses

Continuing cataloguing my books - probably in a totally unprofessional way which would have librarians all over the world shaking their heads sadly. My alphabetical list of fiction authors now runs from A-Y - Ben Aaronovitch to Frank Yerby; no authors beginning with Z. No Q or X for that matter. What am I missing? Who am I missing?

Anyway I've now realised that I have a lot of novels - 56 - by authors beginning with M - Rose Macaulay to Julie Myerson. I especially like Julie Myerson's style of writing and her strange and sometimes cruel stories, but I've got more novels by Alastair Maclean than by her! This dates back to my early teens, before I became more interested in romantic historical fiction - hence the Frank Yerby. I'd been a tomboy as a kid and Maclean's simply plotted espionage and adventure stories appealed to me, a sort of grown up continuation of The Famous Five.

However the first Alistair Maclean I ever read was not an adventure story. It was his very first novel, HMS Ulysses, and I became obsessed with this rather grim and compelling story of the Arctic Convoys in WWII.  Maclean had served as a seaman on these convoys during the war and his descriptions of the hardships and perils captured my empathy and my imagination. I read it time and again. The strange thing about this book is, I had my paperback copy of HMS Ulysses with me at school and it was confiscated.

I was told it was unsuitable and I shouldn't be reading such things. I protested that there was a copy in the school library, which was true, but I was ignored. The book was returned to me at the end of term, without comment. For years I was bemused by the whole episode, until it recently occurred to me that this particular member of staff might have been confused and thought I was reading James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If she'd really known anything about either book she would have known that the cover illustration, of shipwrecked men huddled in a lifeboat, was not likely to be set in licentious Dublin. School matrons obviously didn't need to be educated.