Toy Fights: A Boyhood - 'A classic of its kind' William Boyd

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Toy Fights by Don Paterson review: ditching God for music in Toy Fights by Don Paterson review: ditching God for music in

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Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson – The Irish Times

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Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson review – God, brawls

None of this should detract from how frequently very funny Toy Fights is. The book is beautifully crafted. To say it has a poet’s touch suggests a style that is lyrical or even glutinous, but really the language is precise, balanced and every other sentence has me wondering “How did he do that?” It’s full of set pieces, like Paterson’s description of sleeping in nylon pyjamas between nylon sheets, where “if I turned over suddenly in the night I got tased,” and “in the morning my hair was like Eraserhead, and I had learned to automatically put a foot on the floor to earth myself before I turned the lamp on”. Don Paterson, 59, is one of our most outstanding poets, a winner of the Whitbread poetry prize, the Costa poetry award, all three Forward prizes, the TS Eliot prize (twice), and the Queen’s gold medal for poetry. He is about to publish Toy Fights, a memoir of his life up to the age of 20. The book should carry a warning: anyone wanting a quiet book should read elsewhere – it will make you laugh aloud. It describes growing up on a Dundee council estate, an unruly school life and the beginnings of his obsession with music (Paterson was later a guitarist with the Celtic-influenced, Euro-jazz band Lammas). His gloriously gnarled humour never upstages seriousness, particularly in his account of a psychiatric breakdown as an adolescent, recalled with unself-pitying precision. Friends creator Marta Kauffman reveals she spoke to Matthew Perry just TWO WEEKS before his death - saying actor was 'in a good place' However even during the poverty and mentally ill episodes , he writes so precisely, affectionately, scabrously, funnily. Paterson says, “It won’t surprise you to hear that I won’t be spontaneously drawn on the subject.” But we hardly need him to be: in Toy Fights, he rails against Edinburgh University’s decision to remove David Hume’s name from a building “for his crime of espousing racist views that were, miserably, as common as breathing out in the 18th century”. Paterson is particularly disgusted that no amount of previous good work can overturn such modern judgments: “Genuine exchange with a student: ‘Do you know who David Hume was?’ ‘I don’t care.’”The young Don becomes obsessed with origami (a brilliant and wholly surprising passage), God, The Osmonds, the Boys’ Brigade and, of course, sex and girls. He was born in 1963, a harsh time in Scotland. His mother was obsessed with the tenor Mario Lanza and was desperately upset when he died early — of over-eating, as it happens. Much of the book is put beautifully. For a poet, it’s more a book that’s obviously careful and aware of its language rather than something I’d describe as poetic or particularly lyrical. Actually, it frequently makes a concerted effort *not* to be these things (and when he borrows from his own poetry, he makes the quotes explicit)

Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson | Goodreads

REVEALED: The 'super comfortable' power leggings from Sweaty Betty that gym goers can't get enough ofbut the presenter brushes off the drama and dons a sexy Storm costume as she joins Paloma Faith and Jourdan Dunn at star-studded Halloween bash Heidi Klum tantalisingly reveals just PART of her Halloween look after weeks of speculation... so what WILL the queen of the costumes dress as? It was very hard. I had studiedly avoided thinking about it for so many years. It would have been better – healthier – to look at it earlier, but given my task was to write up to the age of 20 it was hardly an episode I could avoid because it was formative. I thought: well, finally, this is where you have to turn and face it. You write: “My state in repose is bored, slightly afraid, agitated, and for some reason really dehydrated.” What’s with the dehydration?