Tim Lott: 'Julie has betrayed Jake for her own ambition'
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Independent Minds
I have been through something similar to Julie Myerson (who, incidentally, I know and like). When I wrote about intimate details of my divorce in a piece for Granta some years ago, I was attacked in The Guardian. More recently, when I wrote about the murder of my agent Rod Hall for Granta, I was bitterly criticised by some of Rod's friends.
I haven't read Julie's book, but of several things I am sure. It will be extremely well written, and written with love, as Julie says. But I am also sure she should not have published it.
Writing about the intimate lives of friends, colleagues and family is fraught with perils, but it isthe instinct of writers to reveal all in the interests of "truth". They defend themselves with the conviction that they are artists acting in a larger interest. They also believe that so long as they are well intentioned and that the piece is written with literary merit, the work will be judged as valid.
Julie's emotions this morning, as she reaps the whirlwind, will be twofold. Pain. But also a quiet, private satisfaction that her work has been given such prominence. For a writer, after all, exists to be read.
But I repeat: the book, whatever its qualities as a piece of writing, is a moral failure. To write about a child so intimately – and critically – without that child's permission, now that they are old enough to grant or withhold that permission, is an indefensible act.
Every time I have ever written a controversial narrative, I have approached the chief people being written about, shown them the finished article and insisted that they had the right to change anything they felt unfair. I did so with The Scent of Dried Roses to my family. I did so in the memoir about my divorce to my wife. I did so in the case of a piece I wrote about the murder of Rod Hall to his sister, and to his life partner and his business partner.
These steps have not always been sufficient. After a row about something else, my wife withdrew her consent at the last moment. I allowed publication to go ahead. Rod Hall's sister objected to the piece being republished by a national newspaper. I overruled her objections. The writer Jeremy Brock who made a speech at Rod's memorial service reported by me felt betrayed as a result of a mistake in the copy-approval process. I apologised to him, but stood by my piece.
Each one of these reactions upset me, but I had done my best to strike a balance between the writer's desire to reveal the truth and the moral responsibility to protect others' rights to their truth.
In this case Julie has got the balance wrong. To write intimately and critically about your own child requires the absolute maximum of propriety. Julie, by not exercising this caution, has betrayed Jake in order to further her own ambition. She will, no doubt, prosper professionally as a result. But she may pay a high price in damage to the future integrity of her family and in the arena of her own conscience.
She has made her decision, and she must pay the price. But at least she had a choice in the matter. Her son was not given that privilege, and that is a reality which is defensible neither morally nor maternally.
Tim Lott's The Scent of Dried Roses is republished as a Penguin Modern Classic in June
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Comments
If the liberal elite and the chattering classes don't like it - great.
The way people think or construct you in or out of a 'social network' has different implications for different generations: maybe Julie thought that the impact of her anxious musings about Jake's foul behaviour might give her back authority both as a creative woman and as a mother and she has the right (although not socially sanctioned right) to explore this. It's very easy in the emotional heat of a situation 'gone wrong' to castigate her motives because these kinds of efforts go beyond what a mother and a pillar of respectable society is allowed to do, even now in 2009.
Jake has a problem with drugs, however hard he protests against it. He's also in an environment where 'managing his identity' is very important. Looking for financial and future income for people in their twenties and thirties is within the frame of self promotion within an always uncertain and quixotic now and it compounds their inability to empathise with others. Because of the apparent breakdown of his relationship with his parents he's now in a situation where this book is going to propel him into financial celebrity so that he's going to expect payment for his story.
I think she's been badly advised...that there probably is a novel to come out of this but that it's a much better novel than the one the publishers are hping to meet their deadlines and budgets.
I'd say be bold Julie, have courage and withdraw this novel, take control of what you might really be able to say in tranquillity and use what you now know to admit chaos and mistakes are as much a part of the writing load as they are in life. Live and write don't live to justify yourself to technological or celebrity defined understandings of what your life is and can be.
'Text, counter text and narrative is part of the ever increasingly complex business of managing your identity in a technological environment.'
What's technology got to do with it? She's written a book - these things have been around for quite a while now. He's given an interview to a newspaper - idem.
Are you practising your essay writing?
(Text=stories remembered in whatever social context countertext=whatever counterclaim you make or may want to make in whatever context Narrative=the 'running order or batting average' of calls and responses in whatever environment the argument takes place in). I think this situation is just like a more melodramatic version of the kinds of siege and lock down many families feel at the moment.
Question how can parents and children balance their antipathies?
Managing your identity=how does anyone, ever, control the negative effects of how others see them?
Having a facebook page or not having a facebook page: the 'book' could be anything where a parent tries to understand and try to deal with a situation while they're at work and fails.
Excessive use of any drug, moreover, especially deliberate and demonstrative excess, is usually a sign of a deeply unhappy personality. Has Myerson, whom I like and admire btw from her occasional TV appearances, wondered whether her treatment of her son as a case study, which he clearly resents, may have displaced a healthy parental relationship (based on identification and supportiveness, not critical distance) and contributed to his inability/unwillingness to confrom/adjust/cooperate?
To attach the catch-all label 'drug addict' to her son as if that explains everything is simply a way of justifying her actions without having to consider her own involvement in the problem.
My daughter started mixing with a drug dealer at 15. when I tried to stop her seeing him she left home at 16 and went to live with my parents who could not control her. She moved away from them and started the rounds of grubby bedsits and heavier drugs in London without my knowing anything about this. My parents insisted she was living with friends and OK.
She too became violent and abusive as the drugs got stronger. She was always 'borrowing' money and never paid it back. I guess I didn't want to think of my once lovely daughter being on hard drugs and by the time it became impossible for her to hide it and me to not notice things had gone beyond any point of return.
three years ago she was selling her body on the streets at 39 years old and sleeping with anyone, male or female. He husband left her and she has three young children with her which I never see.
She came to stay with me for a while but was so abusive and violent that I had to let her go, it was impossible. I regret that she is now on her own and I have lost my once lovely daughter and three grandchildren, but I cannot take the abuse any more I am not a youngster and not in good health either.
I hope Julie's son sees the error of taking drugs and the family can get together before all is lost.