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Revision as of 18:44, 10 December 2011
, 18:44, 10 December 2011no edit summary
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|name= Catriona Stoddart
|verb= said
|comment=Dear Bookbag,
I read this review with utter disbelief having been a fan of Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life column for some years. Unlike this review Jeremy Clarke’s columns are beautifully constructed, keenly observed in that unfettered way The Spectator does so well, utterly hilarious, intelligent and a joy to read. Many weeks they come about as close to perfection as an 800 word piece of this type can. The funniest I read and I’ve only been reading them for a few years - isn’t in the book which, from Lesley Mason’s point of view is just as well. It would probably send her into a dead faint of left-wing, feminist indignation.
What struck me about Mason’s review was the carping bitterness of it. She doubts the truth of his writing and his life only ‘presuming’ the son he writes about exists – what arrogance! She uses that old favourite missile ‘misogynist’. I don’t think having many relationships, and let’s face it an unmarried man in his fifties has bound to have had a few, makes him a misogynist. Anyway the nastiest misogynists I’ve ever met happen to be women.
I can hardly claim to have been in the gutter myself although have pretty close to outside edge of the kerb on a few occasions. Twenty two years ago I stood with my baby daughter in the homeless queue of the local housing department because we couldn’t keep up our mortgage payments for our tenement flat in a run-down post-industrial town in the West of Scotland. I was a nurse and although my husband worked 12 hour days he earned nothing. Oh yes and I went to a ‘sink’ comprehensive school in the 1970s too before the term became common usage. Occasionally I have opinions of which I’m frequently uncertain but no party political affiliations.
Without boring everyone too much with my own ‘life’, I have to say I owe Jeremy Clarke. Short-changed on the parental front I was extremely close to my grandmother, who from a distance of 300 miles managed to keep me sane during many difficult times. When she was dying, there was a period when I thought I would never smile or laugh again. By nature I’m a sunny person - this was serious. I loved her dearly and was utterly heartbroken. In the midst of all this one Saturday morning in April 2009 I was reading The Spectator. No one else was up, the dogs were fed and quiet. I read front to back, agreeing, disagreeing but always thinking. I came to Low Life and laughed so much tears poured down my face and my sides hurt. The dogs looked anxiously at this spectacle having not seen anything like it for some time. Thank you Jeremy Clarke!
I can’t recommend this book highly enough nor the other articles he writes regularly for The Spectator on drink and travel. Lesley Mason should give the Spectator a trial. A month at least. The cinema reviews by Deborah Ross are fantastic, Taki’s a scream, Rod Liddle is great and often funny as are Hugo Rifkind (none of can help our background), James Dellingpole and Toby Young.
Many thanks,
Catriona Stoddart
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