The Grass Arena: An Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The world he found himself living in was bleak and violent, full of repeated arrests, assaults and injuries. As in Knut Hamsun's mighty book `Hunger', we are utterly compelled both by the power of Healy's story and his great power in the telling of it, no matter how bleak the outlook, to stay by his side until the last word is writ. -- Daniel Day Lewis, August 2008 If you like your memoirs gritty then I have some GRIT 4 u (in the form of John Healy living 15 hellish years on the streets due to alcoholism) Healy never quite lost everything. He never went mad completely. That made it worse in some ways. “Trying to hold onto a bit of sanity can make you vulnerable in lots of ways.” That he did hold on leaves us with a rarely powerful testimony. I liked the way his addiction to drink left Healy’s life so abruptly, supplanted by chess, a far less dangerous obsession. Also, his visit to India was told with uncharacteristic charm and repose. In these two narratives and his childhood years, the days in Ireland and the army, there are poignant reflections but still never any true depth of thought. A deep psychological analysis is unnecessary, but I wanted to know what was going on in his mind, for he must have often questioned himself and his desolation: his sentiments, his underlying hopes and fears, his frustrations and anger. Not only were there opportunities in these narratives but more so in the grass arena part of the book where it would have added a much-needed texture to the prose, and a varied pace to the writing.

An alcoholic knows no line they cross them all until there is no where else to go. It is either death or salvation. John Healy had a noxious childhood. Isolated by his mother and abused by his father, he staggered into drug and alcohol abuse to alleviate the pain in his body and soul. A unique insight into the world of the alcoholic vagrant. It's reminiscent of some of Charles Bukowski's work, although - unlike Bukowski - John Healy had no safety net, no rented room, and no employment. He and his fellow vagrants get injured, maimed, die by accident, and get murdered, and all the while their only focus is on their next drink.If you enjoyed The Grass Arena, you might like Last Exit to Brooklyn, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. OK I’ve changed the 4 stars to 5, mainly because I’ve been sat thinking about this again, and can’t get the voice, its insistence on truth and its brutal depiction of the world of the vagrant alcoholic out of my head. This is one of the milder episodes: ‘We could get no water to mix with it [surgical spirit], so we went in the church and filled a milk bottle out of the holy water font and started slowly to swallow it. But it’s hard to get down first thing in the day – any time for that matter. Bastard stuff. It either makes you dead sleepy and fit for nothing or drives you mad and ready to kill some cunt.’ Finally, Healy’s fellow wino falls under a train from a platform in the Angel Underground. At the time, I lived at the Angel Islington, when the northbound and southbound platforms of the station were in the same tunnel with a single narrow platform in the middle. Even sober it felt like walking a tightrope.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin Classics edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe.In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison.John Healy (b. 1943) was born into an impoverished, Irish immigrant family, in the slums of Kentish Town, North London. Out of school by 14, pressed into the army and intermittently in prison, Healy became an alcoholic early on in life. Despite these obstacles Healy achieved remarkable, indeed phenomenal expertise in both writing and chess, as outlined in the autobiographical The Grass Arena. If you enjoyed The Grass Arena, you might like Last Exit to Brooklyn, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Sober and precise, grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once'Literary Review'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide'Colin MacCabe 288 pp. Englisch.

Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. The greatest benefit Healy gained might have been its cathartic quality. This Penguin Modern Classic republished the first edition that was prematurely pulled from print by the piqued boss of the publishing house. Characteristically Healy had said what he’d thought about him.

In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison. Like many beggars, thieves and con-men Healy is a great story-teller. Apparently this book is not a case of a middle class editor turning a pigs ear into a silk purse. Healy really did write it as is. Well done him - just a pity about the subject matter and the life he lived to get it!A remarkable book. Many have written about addiction but none to my mind from a position so deeply rooted in the abyss as Healy, not even Bukowski and certainly not Burroughs. The story of the author, who lived as a complete alcoholic vagrant for years and had many brushes with death, then finds redemption in prison through chess and strides out of the gutter, is one of the most life-affirming things I think I have ever read. I found Healy's early childhood, the time when he went to rural Ireland to visit relatives, and even his army days a good start. Bucolicism and nostalgia met head-on with urban brutality. But during his wino days, Healy's writing is like a stand-up comedian performing his material in rapidly delivered one-liners, and there are a lot of them. They’re mostly unconnected and extremely brief reminiscences. Rather than telling a coherent story, they are a series of similar, pithy anecdotes with the common theme of drinking and violence. New characters arrive with alarming frequency with no introduction. It's like a butterfly frenetically flitting from one anecdote to another without respite to take nectar, or in this case for Healy to take a plaudit. Because, nearly all these anecdotes are interesting but after a sentence or two, we are off onto another one, and another, etc., etc., etc…

Kartoniert / Broschiert. Condition: New. John Healy, the son of poor Irish immigrants in London, grows up hardened by violence and soon finds himself overwhelmed by alcoholism. He ends up in the grass arena: the parks and streets of the inner city, where beggars, thieves, prostitutes and killers f. Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide'I saw an arts programme with a bunch of London showbiz luvvies singing the praises of a noble-savage type character called John Healy and his ‘wonderful’ autobiography ‘The Grass Arena’. On the one hand I was intrigued, on the other hand I know that London always bigs-up London (boxing and football being good examples of undeserved reputations) so I approached the book with trepidation. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison. John Healy (b. 1943) was born into an impoverished, Irish immigrant family, in the slums of Kentish Town, North London. Digital Reads A Curse For True Love : the thrilling final book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series The last thing John Healy needs is a tidy snippet of blurb from the likes of me which is a good thing because economy defeats me; I don't know how to be moderate or concise in praise of his startling autobiography `The Grass Arena'. So economy I'll leave to him, a master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many men with weightier reputations. There is no perceptible distance between the words, which seem to have chosen themselves and the experiences from which they blossomed like a garden of wild flowers. Armed to the teeth with his wit and self-knowledge he takes us to that other place, his grass arena, the one which we pass how many times in any given day, averting our eyes? The one into whose violent clutches we might descend more easily than we dare to contemplate. He is our jaunty, gleeful tour guide and messenger from hell. His fellow combatants, exuberant, murderous and sentimental, by turns touchingly loyal, vengeful and treacherous seem to have sprung from the same bloodlines as Falstaff, Pistol, Nell and their fellows. They pitch their tents in the same refuse-filled shadows as their forebears; a confederacy of the dispossessed. Healy's life, were it not for an astonishing turn of events, seems predestined to be a short one.