Review: Straight White Male

The life of a bestselling author is an easy one: rest on your laurels cashing in on the success of your last work and, occasionally, write something new. The real life of a bestselling author is something completely different: not so much resting as searching for a new work which will hold that level of fame, which will prove that the bestseller was not a flash in the pan, that you have considerable more in you than just this one book. It is coupled with a great deal of strain, many beginnings and endings, hundreds of sheets of white paper which simply refuse to fill up with the words necessary to make that next work a bestseller too.

The life of a bestselling author is filled with parties, with celebration, with an ease everyone else, with their nine-to-five mundane lives, simply cannot imagine. Or it is a strict regime: getting up each morning with a target, with a certain number of words which need to be written; fitting in appointments in out-of-the-way bookstores; bargaining with agents, with publishers, with film producers; finding time for your own family and friends amid the mass adulation of the public, of those who simply have to be in the presence of someone famous. The strain of fame, even a fame lasting a mere nine minutes, can bring other aspects of life to the fore, less pleasant ones above all. There is this feeling that an achievement must be bettered, this inner force which pushes the author ever onward whilst, at the same time, holding him or her back with considerations of what the public expects, what the book buying public will purchase.

Photo Credit: Smithsonian’s National Zoo – Creative Commons

Then there are the offers: film rights; screenplays; articles and talks. Distractions abound, and the laurels wilt and die all too quickly. Everyone wants something, but the author is only one person and has a limited working day just the same as any normal person. Hardly surprising that many turn to their best friend in times of need, and that best friend just happens to be a glass of something strong, something alcoholic.

John Niven has managed to take the life, after the bestseller, of an author and present it to us as less than rosy, as considerably less than we might imagine. The parties are compelling, but the excitement wears thin very quickly. The offers of work, be it talks or television appearances, articles or screenplays, are hedged in with deadlines, with interference, with tens of people who just know better. In reality it is a very hard and bitter fight to keep above water, to not sink into the morass of the has-been, the burnt-out, the overworked and underpaid writer of all and sundry. His writing style brings us to tears, and makes us laugh at the absurdity of life in the fast lane and especially at the life that Kennedy Marr, bestselling author, is faced with.

We live through the bitterness of memory, the dark humor that bites back at every opportunity, the reality of a life not quite on auto-pilot, not quite on the main road any more. And, with Kennedy stumbling along this road more than controlling his chosen life, we see the darker side of the human spirit, oppressed by fame and dwindling fortune, forced into positions he would not normally have considered, battling against those who claim to know better, who can write his words without even knowing the slightest thought within his mind. We live the life, briefly but in great depth, of a man who is sinking, who has given up trying to keep his head above the surface, who has succumbed to the most deadly of all sins, one after another and now, finally, is facing the consequences.

The biting wit, the consequences of fortune, the interference of fate and all her minions draw us into a deep feeling of sympathy, of understanding, even of revelation over a life gone wrong, of one mistake after another, of bad judgement, of foolhardiness. And it is a wonderful experience as the words come out from the page and infest our minds, as we laugh at the misfortune of others, at the characterization of those pitted against a failing, once-bright star.

Published by Windmill Books. ISBN: 978 0 09 959215 0.

• Viktoria Michaelis.

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