Mumsnet Discussions - Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?

I only wish writers did get this much every time a book was borrowed from a library. It doesn`t work like that. What happens is that the PLR system selects a number of libraries - I think it is about a dozen- across the country. These stay on the sampling libraries list for 3 years and in these sampling libraries ONLY every book borrowed is recorded. It is these records which are used to pay the author a small amount ( less than a penny ) every time a book of theirs is borrowed. In 3 years the libraries go and another set take their place - the list is varied according to size of place, geographical location, etc etc so it is as fair as possible. The amount any author can earn from PLR is capped at £6,600 but the vast majority registered earn less than £100.
It is a rough and ready system but better than nothing.
Ms Myerson`s book could therefore be borrowed by 10 million people from libraries but she could never get more than £6,600 and that includes borrowings of ALL her books not just this new one.

Love this thread so much..Just wanted to add - I'm sure someone has said this - that the thing that shocks me is that she must have been writing this book and the LWT column simultaneously, because she only stopped writing LWT last summer and the book must've been finished in spring. So she was mining the same source for a 'family emergency' book and an 'amusing vignette' column.

And why allow the columns to be made into a book if she was worried about the children finding out?

I deliberately chose a university that did pretty well no literary theory or criticism at all in its English lang. and lit. degree course.

Oooh, I forgot: I am an anonymous foetus atm. grin

So I can be rather rude and say that when I was at university the word 'bullshit' had the very specific meaning of 'continental philosophy'. grin

I don#t understand what you mean cherryblossom, about the novel aspects of faction. Can I ask the question edam implies: what makes this different from the long-established genre of literary (auto)biography?

The new aspect isn't the ambiguous nature of the bok's claim to truth, because lit biog too straddles two sets of 'truth' (literary and factual)in the sense you imply, doesn't it? And I don't understand the way lit crit makes a mystery of 'the Real' (why is it capitalised, hypostatised(sp)?)

I'm wondering whether what grabs you is the way that the book itself seems not quite to be the proper object of criticism (for you). Instead the object of criticism is the book's production and emergence into the media world? So that it becomes something like a piece of performance art in that the product is subordinated to the process, or at least is only one element of whatever it is that constitutes the object of criticism?

I've always felt a bit floored by lit crit. It seems to admire all the parts of philosophy that smug analytical philosophers are disparaging about. grin

(on the point above about can you write what you like about your young child... not if it's libellous. I don't see why a child cannot appoint its own lawyer or through the other parent sue if the publication would cause enough damage. There are two entirely separate issues - libel and then any privacy rights.

He could if he can show he didn't consent, may be get the profits from the book and then spend them on therapy or whatever else he thinks would help him.

I suppose if a youngish child is being damaged because its parent is publishing information about it that children are teasing it about at school it's more likely to become a question for social services than lawyers.

Interesting issues over the extent to which we fully own and control our children or instead borrow them.

He is certainly not lost.

I am enjoying the slant this thread has taken. It's like wandering into one of my seminars from my degree (post-modern literary criticism featured quite heavily).

Incidentally, for those of you who want to read the book without giving Ms Tiresome any of your cash, I agree that buying 2nd hand from ebay/amazon is the way. Writers get 7p (or is it 11p?) from every library book taken out ...

It was hard to take postmodernism seriously after it turned out that Paul de Man (famous Yale deconstructionist, pal of Jacques Derrida) wrote anti-semitic articles for a Nazi-controlled Belgian newspaper during the war and that Foucault supported the revolution of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

Julie deserves better than them even if she is awful.

Phew.

Have just finished reading all 40 (FOURTY!!!) pages of this thread. Cannot believe I now know so much- stuff I really didn't want to know- about the Myerson family. And, like Cherryblossoms, can't believe I'm being sucked into this whole saga like this...

Just one thing. What really has upset me the most is the title of the book- 'The lost child'. I want to shake the woman & shout to her 'your child is NOT lost!! He's alive & well, is 20 years old, living very near you. Pull the book before it's published, go find him, hug him & apologize. Tell him this was all a dreadful mistake'. I find it in complete bad taste- and it also shows a surprising lack of even basic insight, and a completely un-parental coldness- to refer to your child as 'lost'.

I can imagine that if my mother were to have written a book, when I was 20 years old, referring to me as her 'lost child', I would have been utterly devastated. I would feel, I suspect, as if my own parents had abandoned me, had given up on me. I would then possibly feel very lost indeed.

and what does 'text' mean anyway? A straightjacket imposed on our thinking by dead white men (funny how many post-modernists are dead/middle-aged white men...)

They would probably argue that JM did not actually have a son, and that it was all just a text, including her....

oh, post-modernists would argue pretty much anything IIRC!

There must be, mustn't there, but it isn't a field I know much about. I think the ethics of writing are terribly important and that when you lose sight of the fact that truth matters to people, even if it is a contested/unresolvable sort of truth, and that perspective is a sort of emotional possession which people can feel robbed of by being "lied about" or denied a voice, then you are on very dodgy territory morally: although I guess post-modernists would argue that there is no such thing as a stable morality in authorship anyway.

It's been ages since I had to do any lit crit - not since university, tbh - so am v. impressed by all these clever posts. (I studied post-modernism in some depth but have forgotten everything bar Barthes being killed by a milk float or ice cream van or whatever.)

Are there any guidelines we can draw on from criticism of autobiography? I know this is more complicated because her son is answering back, but wondering if there might be a starting point

Yes I think it is one of those terribly cynical media-hype dramas in which the newsprint changes the context of the book text so totally that it is more of an "event" than a text, it becomes a real-life drama happening in realtime as opposed to either a memoir or a literary text. That is what i think the critics fail to pick up on.

And perhaps we need new ways to tackle this type of emotionally manipulative writing - something which accknowledges that the audience may be loosing something of their own by constantly being bombarded.

(don't go Cherryblossoms!, don't resist, this is great stuff, literary criticism + mc parenting)

justabout - I'm not sure I do.

And certainly don't understand why I am still being sucked in!!
Must resist.

Unfortunately I haven't read any JM books before, or this one so I am not sure it is even fits in the space of literature. It is being written about over and over again because she is a middle class mother inviting us to speculate about her family drama.

Ok so I see that we don't have a way to negotiate and talk about this type of writing within literary criticism (if we accept it is worth talking about, minus the family drama) so need a new set of criteria. Going back to when critics decided that the unreal might become the new 'authentic' then yes we've reached that stage - loads and loads of people are happy to accept the unreal as more authentic than their next door neighbour's problems. So it's pretty much accepted. I'd love to be tackling how to deal with this stuff... hmm let me think I'm a bit fuzzy after 3 glasses of light red wine.

It does need to be attacked with a bit more bite I feel, not just allowed and accepted as a new norm.

Yes.
And the fact it's real, and ongoing.
Urgh! I feel emotionally worn out.
And disgruntled. [selfish emoticon]

Good points, cherryblossom: if I understand them fully about which I am not sure!

All the reviewers have a common thread saying 'put aside what you have read in the papers, blah, blah, blah' and it is the story of Mother Courage etc etc, but I just CAN'T separate the two things.

All the interviews and publicity IS going to colour my opinion. Knowing that there are two conflicting 'stories' about what happened in the fall out with her family just makes the whole book somehow difficult to accept as a piece of 'faction' or whatever the genre is. Now we know her son is at odds with the version being told, whether or not he is telling the truth, it just makes the book into something else. I am not explaining it very well, but just makes for uncomfortable reading, I suppose, however well written (and I am sure it is as she is an accomplished writer).

There was an excerpt of it in the Observer review, about the son hitting her and she writes something along the lines of 'he towered above me, me only 5' 3" in my green satin heels' and it immediately made me think, why does she have to mention what she was wearing???? I don't think I would have particularly thought that if there hadn't been all the press interviews from her son, saying it's all about her, not him.

Hmmm. But I tend to see that as part of the thing about the move to "faction". It ceases to be operating within the genre of "Literature", which has it's own peculiar games of judgement. It moves instead into the space of "the Real"; and the games it plays with that particular structure should be explored.
As "faction" it also, for good or ill, moves into this whole genre of "authenticity" literature (misery memoir/celebrity culture/reality TV, whatever). And there it has a function as a "truth-claim".
So to judge it as just "Literature" is to apply an out-of-date, mid-twentieth century literary/critical technique to what is, essentially, emerging as the early twenty-first century' dominant cultural form.
So as a "truth-claim", with it's claim to the "Real" and to public space, it pulls judgements, on the "real" "truth" of the issues it itself claims "reality" from, from us; who just don't "know".
So maybe the extra-literary "judgement" is actually a (not very pleasant) part of the process.
I think.
It's a sobering thought that this form is what critics/historians of the future will judge us by, isn't it?

The reviews of the book will be unsatisfactory because we haven't been judging her book, but have been judging her parenting. Is that it?

Been pondering as to why the reviews coming out have been so unsatisfying. And find I'm back here on the support thread, still pondering ... .

Basically, I feel like a passenger on a train, emotions all wrung out of me, but essentially passive and impotent; which jarrs oddly with the huge emotional ... mugging ... I seem to have experienced.

All the reviews seem to say "Oi! Stop judging! How dare you ask questions! How dare you splodge your emotions all over the place!" Which is slightly at odds with the feeling that i had my emotions/judgments actually removed under duress and something shoved at me, and my "opinion" extracted rather forcibly.

So I reckon those reviewers aren't helping me, as a passenger on the train, as a sheep-who-is-happy-to-be-a-sheep really find a vocabulary/expression for the whole sorry experience.

I wish they'd dealt more with what is at stake if a writer moves into the area of "faction"; all the issues of power and truth and judgment and so on.

Interestingly, Julie Myerson has said she wrote "Out of Breath" from the same experience. Which, of course, means she fishes the same waters, again and again (we knew that). But it's interesting that "fiction" just doesn't raise quite the same issues. Maybe why she just didn't think that there was going to be a problem with the new book. She'd nevr encountered that response before.

here

Yes, that was vile too, dandylioness

I personally have no interest in reading The Lost Child at all. I do like Julie Myerson as a novelist, but wasn't interested in her book about her house or about her autobiographical stuff. Although having read some of the LWT columns through links here and finding it, as others said, car crash reading, I would be quite interested in reading that book. But probably not enough to buy it as don't want her profiting.

The quote from her husband in the papers the oother day about whether they'd donate some of the profits to a charity dealing with drug abuse put me right off them. Something like "we'll see how much we make, if there's any left over, then maybe." I wonder what his definition of 'left over' is. Surely it would be the altruistic thing to do to donate a small sum anyway, because a modest donation is better than none?

Yup, strikes me that way too, Ponders, especially the way they say ooh, it's not like it was in our day, it's all scary and dramatic and will set you on The Road To Ruin.

<disclaimer> I know sod-all about skunk but if I wanted to find out, don't think the Myersons would be my choice of experts.

Also reminds me of that poor girl, Leah Betts. I was in my first year of university when she died. All of us teenagers were very scornful of the moral panic and the insistence of her parents/the newspapers that there was some Evil Drug Overlord who had supplied the drug. Obviously somewhere up the chain there will have been one, but we knew perfectly well a. that she would have got it from a friend who was not trying to kill her or sell her into slavery and b. that it was drinking too much water, not one E, that killed the poor child.

It was moral panic about drugs that did for her - if she hadn't been so terrified of tabloid stories about dehydration, she wouldn't have guzzled so much water.

Tim Dowling yesterday

V funny (esp paying the kid next door)

the skunk epidemic

the way they talk about it reminds me of Cake on Brass Eye (but I know nothing about skunk apart from the Myerson propaganda blush

)

I never really thought about it like that Xenia.
But I think the child's privacy is controlled by the parents up to 16? 18?

It's interesting though. As a reporter I always assumed that if the parents gave the nod then all was fine.

There's something tabloid-esque about Julie getting her kid to 'approve' the manuscaript so he couldn't sue her.

Do you think she had legal documents there for him to sign?

Does it mean you can write whatever you like about your children, true or false?

Wait two weeks and buy it s/h off Amazon/ebay?

I am not a very proficient criminal. My face would give me away.

Edam, interestingly enough, as you were posting I was having a conversation with my DH that went like this:

"Like Mein Kampf, I feel I should read it in all its awfulness, but I refuse to buy it. Maybe I will borrow them from the library".

"Ah but she would still get a few pence from the library loan".

Moral dilemma.

But this case involves publication in a book all the details about her son (although she says he consented which is obviously very material). I suspect when your child is very little you probably do have a right to put it on stage, photograph it nude and publish that to your friends, take it to nudist camps, tell your friends how many times it wet its pants etc etc but once it gets to about 12/13, has its own ideas, views then gradually just as in guidance from th einformation commission about when a school needs consent from the child or consent from the parent for various things, it comes of an age when it has the right to decide some matters itself.

I know what you mean Cherryblossoms. I am not denying that her writing can be powerful and persuasive - some part of me would like to read it but again I have huge reservations about contributing to her coffers and validating it in any way. Knowing what I know about the background, it would somehow feel wrong even if I did wait to read a library copy.

I think I would have to slip it into another dust jacket!

Those cases are all about newspapers/magazines/photography, Xenia. Quite different. And all turn on different points - one is about a child, another about a celebrity having the right to sign exclusive deals for pics of her wedding etc. etc. etc. Nothing comparable to this case. And none leading to the creation of a single, simple privacy law. Although if Myerson junior did get a no-win, no fee lawyer to take a case to Judge wotisface, the high court one who is single-handedly inventing a privacy law, it would be interesting to see what he had to say.

But Naomi campbell won as did Zeta Jones and JK Rowling and Max M. In other words nothing whatever to do with libel - those revealing the confidential information or personal data can be sued. Thus Jake had he not consented probably could recover damages from his mother.

Not sure whether I'll be strong enough to read it. I'm sure it would make me weep.

She's a v. good writer at those troubling emotions and I'll bet she'll be good at the one's about losing a child.

me too, edam - I would really like to read it but am buggered if JM will benefit!

Think I might borrow it from the library, thereby minimising any contribution to JM's pension fund.

That must have been what happened to myerson with her 3x denial.

I think one or two of our journo/writer posters have read preview copies. But as it has only just been rushed into publication on the wave of all this (adverse??) publicity, most of us haven't.

WHy does this keep happening to my messages? I don't repeat myself three times in real life I promise, promise, promise.

With a few journalists around here I wondered whether a review copy might have wended its way around.

I must admit I probably will buy it. I'm curious. And I have enjoyed her novels.

We're not going to buy it, are we, abraid? grin

Could we get hold of 1 mumsnet copy which can be passed from person to person?

Another good review for the book by Jane Shilling in The Telegraph, I see.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/4978453/The-Lost-Child-by-Julie-Myerson---review.html
May I just ask if anyone on this thread has actually read the book? Not being snide, just interested.

He could get a no-win, no-fee solicitor... <stirs> (Although acutally he's admitted taking drugs and hitting his Ma, so has no chance.)

No he isn't a minor and therefore could sue for libel if so inclined (I hope he does). You are quite right.

Jake isn't a minor any more, though.

<see - no, you haven't>

No, smallorange, it is merely resting.

Have I killed the thread? Have I?

<jumps up and down >

It is a grey area - a minor cannot be written about without parents' consent.

When it comes to privacy the newspapers will look at what is ' out there' already. So Kerry Katona has punted her kids around the media and cannot suddenly demand privacy for her family. Juliue has certainly put it 'out there' to make a few quid.

As for libel - the allegations in the book would have to significantly lower Jake's standing within the community and be untrue for a successful action.
Although I think (5 years as a SAHM has left me rusty) Julie would have to prove allegations in her book to be true. ie: that Jake hit her etc.

So I think in the case of Naomi Campbell the papers would haacve argued that she is 'out there' and makes her money through the media therefore cannot be an invasion of privacy.

True that people publish autobiogs all the time. Sometimes it can breach privacy rights:

http://www.quinlanroad.com/pdf/McKennitt-Privacy-Case-Ends-with-Settlement-PressRelease-O ct5-07-DF.pdf

sorry it was me, not Xenia, who doesn't know the difference between slander and libel! She was quoting my question to her.

But isn't it a grey area? It's not covered by the press code because it's not journalism, it's a book. Plus people publish their autobiographies all the time without seeking the permission of every member of their family and every casual acquaintance namechecked in the book.

As far as publishers go, authors only have to sign a declaration that their work is not libellous and doesn't infringe copyright - they don't have to declare that they've sought permission of everyone mentioned. Publishers normally only seek guidance/legal advice if there are specific allegations which might not stand up in court.

Constance Briscoe for eg made very, very serious allegations against her family and they took her to court but afaik there was no question there of her having invaded their privacy - only whether the allegations were true.

Filming/photography aren't the issues here. Neither is the duty of confidence an employee owes to their employer. I honestly can't see any way in which that batty judge's creation of a privacy law by the back door applies. Sadly for Myerson junior.

And you cannot push your writing into that public space and then claim you're not occupying it, surely?

(Mind yo I have to say that Mr Mosley has brought much joy to the inmates of the Inferiority Complsx in recent months.)

The article Xenia mentions

[whisper] I thought the thread OrmIrian started was funnier ... .

Libel is written, slander is verbal, Xenia.

Right - skip this if you don't like ranting. I need to just vent here. I'm sorry if I'm over-posting (and I really mean it but I just have to! I am compelled. And you know, writers have to write what they have to write wink

) but ...

What I hear in that article is the sound of screeching brakes. It's like a train. The intellectual momentum is being held in check by the force of loyalty - that's the whole judgement/morality stuff this book has walked into. It's a sign of authorial lack of insight and control that it's slightly unforeseen - "unworldly" = lack of intellectual/literary brilliance.

Just saying that exploring all of that is "illegitimate" is not enough. The fact that we can "discuss" this book without its, yet, having its full, fleshly, wordy presence, speaks absolute volumes.

Just saying this is all "illegitimate" is, really, missing, side-stepping, what is "interesting" about this book. Actually, it's just missing the point.

Absolutely agree with cherryblossoms. I just knew that Lawson would imply that her critics just aren't quite clever enough to 'get it'. Tiresomely predictable.

(BTW that Twitter thing is hilarious)

Sorry - that sounded over-assertive and bossy.

Really, I haven't a clue.

Which is why I find myself here on a Saturday morning ... .

Abraid - yep, it's true but ... what that "means" has changed over time and is still changing ... I think.

Eg. There tends to be a thought that "outside" means the author's life, and in the early part of the twentieth century there was an enormous fight against that meaning a reduction of the book being judged as "moral" or "immoral" like a human-being, and usually against the author's "real" life.

That was necessary.

Via cultural studies there has been a re-opening of that, seeing books as taking place within a wider matrix of discourses.

My tuppence-worth is that "authenticity culture" is going to require us to look again at all this question, using a quite sophisticated response, going further than the cultural studies approach.

And [whisper] I think we'll need to look at the whole "judgement" "morality" angle afresh too. And, no, I don't mean simply saying books are "virtuous" or "bad".

Yes, we have privacy rights in the UK. It was illegal for teh NoW to film Max M without his consent in a private place. The courts held that taking a picture of JK Rowling's child in his pushchair in an Edinbuurgh St and publishing it breached the law. PUblishing the fact Naomi Campbell had been at a Narcotics anon meetnig was illegal as was publishing details of the zeta Jones wedding. Also a writer's employee wrote about her employer's home and life and that was held to be illegal too.

It's 100% absolutely clear. Every time a mumsnet poster publishes information about their children without their permission if they can be identified they are arguably committing a criminal offence particularyl if the child is old enough to decide if the information be published. It's not a way to make a load of money and they are expensive cases to bring although Campbell's was on a no win no fee basis in terms of legal costs.

Also I'm not sure Jake's consent was a full valid consent because presumably there's a bit of undue influence a parent exercises over the child - see todays'Times spoof week's diary of Myerson and the supposed consent they get from the children for what they now plan.

We need much much stronger guidance frmo the Children's Commissioner Blair set up when any issue like this is in the press - press releases from them etc.
"By Xenia on Fri 13-Mar-09 22:39:39
Unless they did consent she doesn't have a legal right to publish this information. that's the bottom line.

Is that true though? I thought as long as it wasn't libellous (or is it slanderous? I can never remember which is which) you could pretty much publish what you want. Although I know libel laws in the UK are pretty weak - it's basically up to the writer to prove it's true rather than the reverse."

'lies outside the novel'

Ah, but that's the age old debate, isn't it? Whether you can/should read a book purely on its own terms, without examining external influences. Or whether you can/should read with a constant eye to what is happening outside the book in the author's life.

I haven't read it - of course!!

Dry, dry laugh.

Isn't it interesting how the "Literature" thing is wheeled out?

On what grounds is Lawson judging it as not Literature? I'd love to hear his grounds. What's behind this comment/judgement?

I reckon it's something to do with how it should be weighed against it's content. And for all his defence of the book ... I just wonder what's behind that consignement of it to the secondary ranks.

Aitch, I think you've got something there. It's mad, but isn't there just a huge "Trust" issue here? Isn't part of this about how much we "trust" this book? And then the parent stuff ... .

So weird ... .

"unworldliness" my arse! Notice how Lawson carefully doesn't mention that he and Myerson are mates - or, at least, colleagues?

Yes - I'm with you there, Marsha.

I was wondering why I felt a strange sense of dissatisfaction with the review. I think (and I'm still not sure) it was because what grips about the story lies outside the novel. The review sort of looks at that, but only glances at it; doesn't deal with it. It just says that it's a well-written, slightly self-conscious, book in the mould of other well-written, slightly self-conscious, JM books. It's slightly redundant.

Instead he takes the standard high culture/Literature stance; reviews the book on it's own, as if any acceptance/acknowledgement of it's uncertain boundaries with the Real, it's dwelling in the Real, is a bit infra-dig and not sophisticated.

Actually, I think the "high culture" response lacks subtlety. This book is now dwelling in the space outside the pages. And it's about the spaces left "blank" within. And you could make a case that that is what the book is "about". And I suspect that, though the book achieves a certain self-consciousness as to its intentions and strategies, it's not going to be clever enough to deal with that relationship in a masterful way.

I think it's fair to say that JM is resolutely "middle-brow" rather than Great Literature; from truly Great Literature you can expect a measure of self-awareness and mastery of content. I suspect that the book is simply not strong enough to contain the forces it has opened up (owing to the subject-matter and the culture it has been published into.).

I just don't think the book will be sufficient to itself to handle all the questions it has raised. As a result, we will carry on thinking about this in a supplementary, "illegitimate" way.

And reviewers such as Lawson will continue to regard this exploration of some of the "newer" questions raised by a book such as this as a kind of un-intellectual, lower class "ambush".

Get with the programme, Lawson.

"It's true that the literary quality of the work would not absolve the writer from the issues of privacy and consent, but the book includes a coda in which "the boy" meets his mother in a restaurant and comments on the manuscript, requesting changes to which she agrees. In his newspaper interviews, Jake Myerson seems to have qualified this consent to publication, so readers will simply have to decide who to trust. The book, though, cannot be accused of cruelty. Tender and gentle in its account of the child, it justifies the dedication: "He knows who he is and I love him.""

i find the issue of consent in this matter a bit bogus, tbh.

the boy was already in a tricky position with his parents, having been kicked out of the house etc. would his having said 'i forbid you to publish' (if that were even on the table) have caused them to withdraw their love further?

not to mention the fact that she has lied about such matters before, having denied being the author of LWT to her own children and subjects.

I find this JM stuff more disconcerting even that the Jade stuff, as she is at least a more willing participant in the media onslaught, (all though not, poor thing, for a reason she would chose) .

I find it itchingly irritating for the children to be so used by the parents, so controlled, so manipulated; and the treatment of the daughter in that one story and the abortion information is so awful.

First of the big-hitter reviews.

Any thoughts on the choice of reviewer?

Btw - I experienced a sort of therapy-epiphany. I'm still puzzled as to why this story "got to me" and also puzzled as to why it's "getting to me" annoyed me so much. I did the mental exercise of constructing a "counter-narrative" and now care far, far less.

But I still think it's all very weird. Considering that this is the direction that our culture seems to be going in, it occurs to me I/we are going to have to learn to be articulate about the processes involved in this "authenticity media" and develop strategies to deal with it.

Which sounds really pompous (and maybe it is) but ... the huge response to this and the Jade Goody thing, and the emotional intensity of that response, just says to me we have to lose our innocence about it all.

Or maybe it's just me that thinks that.

Btw, love the way Myerson claims 'my son hit me' as justification for invading his privacy because he's an addict while her own columns show she and her husband have hit their son on several occasions.

Maybe Xenia's thinking about the Press Complaints Commission guidance on identifying children? Or photography? The latter doesn't apply. And neither does the former as Jake's an adult and for the younger ones, it's parents who get to consent on their behalf.

By Xenia on Fri 13-Mar-09 22:39:39
Unless they did consent she doesn't have a legal right to publish this information. that's the bottom line.

Is that true though? I thought as long as it wasn't libellous (or is it slanderous? I can never remember which is which) you could pretty much publish what you want. Although I know libel laws in the UK are pretty weak - it's basically up to the writer to prove it's true rather than the reverse.

How funny, Xenia.

I saw that posted on Jakes Facebook and thought it was absolutely perfect. Great minds think alike!

"coined" the term. "Coning" the term sounds like gardening.

Hi ladies - I've returned the the Myerson-therapy zone.

Went over and checked out the Guardian Unlimited site. One of the posters has coned the term "anti-parenting" for what the book is. Sort of sums up what is slightly macabre about it all in a neat little neologism. Well I thought so anyway.

MsFlittersnoop - I saw that and put out a little lure earlier. But nobody was biting ... .

PMSL at "Mumsnet Fatwa" and the "paramilitary wing"! grin

OK, 'fess up now. Which one of you lot is responsible for this naughtiness?

Argh, ykwim.

Go to the older pages and read to the more recent ones. Tis v. funny and clever.

frogs, do you mean go the older pages and read forwards???

Oh Frogs I couldn't get past the headline of that article. Arrgh!!!!!! Fuck off Nirpal! Trust him to come crawling out the woodwork - what's he after a sympathy shag?

And I'm presuming you've all seen MN namechecked in the Julie Memeson spoof on Twitter?

Hint -- go to teh older pages and read backwards. Tis v. v. good for a laff.

I didn't hear it Ponders but yes, probably. The only thing in Liz Jones' favour is that her ex is probably as narcissistic as she is and he's an adult. But equally navel-gazing as Julie Tiresome

I'm wondering whether she got the consent of the girlfriend to talk about the abortion? Or her parents? Can you imagine being an ex-girlfriend of Jake Myerson now, or her parents?

I thought this all might have died down by now but I was forgetting the small fact that we are actually going to have all the reviews of the book now that it is actually out.

I would be holed up on a remote island somewhere with my family trying to make amends if I had transgressed this much as a parent/human being.

Was Liz thing the one on R4 yesterday morning?

Somebody mentioned an article by some bloke about his divorce & whether that was legit to be written about & somebody else (another female) said no that was wrong too which seemed to shut up the ones in the studio...I didn't know who any of them were & I was in the car so couldn't look 'em up on google & I'd forgotten by the time I got home but honestly, who are these people & what are they on?

Oh my lord - it's spiralling into a vortex. Do you think all of them will get sucked in and spat out in Chat Weekly land or something. I think the broadsheets have devoted quite enough time to this now.

nirpal's no journalist. shock

rofl

Ohgodohgodohgod, journalism will eat itself.

it's not that i'd have an issue with writing 'here are the funny and cute things my lovely dd1 says', it's just that i think they're not that good, by and large (i'm sure you're dh's was excellent wink

). so if i was going to do it, i'd have to really reveal something other. and i couldn't. cos i'd want to be married and have friends after it, iykwim?

I agree Aitch. DH did one for a while when the children were tiny, but it was more about him being a Dad than the children and he gave up before DD1 started school. I don't think he ever wrote anything remotely personal or embarrassing in them though.

tbh i've probably scuppered my career at various points when i've refused to write those navel-gazing family columns. i just couldn't imagine turning my life inside out like that.

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."

Comes to mind.

Unless they did consent she doesn't have a legal right to publish this information. that's the bottom line. They could probably get a court order against their parents restraining them from publishing more about them if it is stuff not yet in the public domain. It is not impossible as a writer to write about thigns other than your children. I write loads and I manage to avoid it and if the children have been involved in anything public it is always with their consent. The girls both drove themselves back frmo university once because they wanted to be in some photo or other of the family but had they refused that would have been fine too.

well they've fecking DELETED the columns now so you can't read it

basically she hears screaming in the street, opens her front door, finds eldest son lying on his sister pulling her head back by her hair, says she is wearing his tee-shirt, the daughter is released then WEIRDLY the mother tells her to take the shirt off, which she does, then the daughter throws it out the front door

then her mother calls her a 'stupid cow'

and that's.... it

which is extraordinarily baffling

God I must stop posting on this - it's like middle class eastenders.

Anyway, thing that struck me about some of it being fictional (like she says the 4 pubes thing is), is that anything major, like the abortion, you assume it is. And even if her children now say 'nah that bit and that bit there were her artistic licence' no one's going to believe them. So not only has she hijacked their actual teenage years, she's rewritten them to provide heightened dramatic tension.

And that Indie reviewer takes no account of the fact that it is largely Jake's story, not Julie's.

lala, i very much agree with you, that it was an amazingly honest admission on her part. but it's the fact that it was in a column that her son already knew/suspected was about him, and a book that made it perfectly clear who it referred to.

she's a novelist. she shoulda kept it fictional.

"the LWT column about allowing her oldest son to assault her daughter and making her strip in front of him. Seriously depressing and deranged behaviour for an intelleigent woman."

shock

It was one of her columns. It wasn't the oldest son it was the younger one, not sure if that makes it any better. Interestingly, in the columns Eddie (Jake) is portrayed as the nicer of the too - flaky but quite sweet, whereas the younger one, Jack (Raphael) comes across as really rather nasty.

I do think the abortion thing was meant to be horrendous (and the girl's mother did know about it because, iirc, she rang up Julie begging her to get her daughter to see sense). I think it is meant to show the lengths she was driven to on behalf of her son and I also feel that there is a certain honesty in admitting that you would wish away your teenage child's unborn baby - she admits to being relieved at having effectively killing her first grandchild (rough paraphrase of her words).

And the reviewer did find the book moving and felt that JM had the right to write (and publish) it.

even the excerpt in the indy review, about a huge fight over the fact that on a hot day he wanted to wear jeans and thick socks, makes JM and her dh sound BONKERS.

why would they not have learned to not sweat the small stuff with three kids in the house?

oh totally mp, that adds an extra layer of horror to the situation. but actually i think writing about it, full stop, is bad enough. it's a monumental betrayal, even if at every point in the process her motives were pure.

the fact that they weren't makes it much worse, of course. not least for the girl, of course, because apart from the exposure of her private life she now knows she trusted someone who did not have her best interests at heart.

what was the thing with the stripping? i must've missed that LWT.

Her slapping him, repeatedly, apparently for wanting to stay home & play guitar in the garden (or for not giving her the keys to lock him out???) which was what triggered the perforated eardrum smack in return, was pretty upsetting too.

Is it wrong to find his account of events more credible than hers?

It's awful, yes it upset me too. That and the LWT column about allowing her oldest son to assault her daughter and making her strip in front of him. Seriously depressing and deranged behaviour for an intelleigent woman.

Whoops. Sorry, am not Zoe Williams (obviously). Must change back.

I know MP. That one really upset me. Imagine being the girl and having to read all about that - and I'm sure lots of their social circle will be able to guess who it is.
Actually I'm surprised the Daily Shame haven't put a call out yet. Do you know the girl Jake Myerson got pregnant?

no no it's not writing about it

it's writing that she bought her a quick private termination in case the child changed her mind:

"We book a termination for first thing Monday morning. It’s private but we don’t dare wait for an NHS appointment. Her mood could change at any time."

yeah, my sister was making a good fist of defending her today until i said 'you know she's written about taking her son's girlfriend for an abortion, don't you?' and my poor sis just threw her hands up and said 'nah, fuck that. there's no defence.'

Yes, anything else is within the realms of, if not forgivable, perhaps at least behaviour that I have seen and understood before.

For that, however, she deserves every ounce of opprobrium that has dropped onto her, and quite probably more.

it is THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY THING, isn't it?

HOW could a woman write about that, about pressurising a young girl to have an abortion?
it is SUCH an amazing, almost sociopathic transgression.

Where were the girl's parents in the abortion decision? Did they even know?

Well, the Independent reviewer obviously hasn't read the Daily Mail this week......

it really sounds

FECKING HORRENDOUS

"Myerson describes the book, to her son and subsequently to her critics, as "a book about how much I love you ... though I realise you may not choose to see it quite like that."

god, she really does put all the responsibility onto him to utterly cave, doesn't she?

and as for this... shock

"Arranging an abortion for her sneering boy's quondam girlfriend, she tells the girl: "'All I want is for you to be OK.' It's not true. It's not all I want. All I want is for this to be over before she has time to change her mind." "

Here's a rather different slant from a reviewer in the Independent who's read the book.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-lost-child-by-julie-myerson-1643545.html

The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm; Professor Branestawn Up the Pole

various others - by Norman Hunter

(re-reasd thread in search of enlightenment) Can someone remind me what book Prof Branestawm appears in?

I think that living with a bad tempered teenager who is keen on skunk is probably a terrible experience. And I think that writers are notoriously efficient and selfish about using their experiences in their work. Nobody who is used by a writer likes it. And Julie Myerson isn't good enough a writer for people to accept that's what she's done.

Blimey. Lovely combination of controlling and self-absorbed there.

OK here's a few gems!

Just to recap, "Home" is where Julie decides to find out about every single person who has lived in her house since it was built in the 1870s. It was published in 2004.

She's roped in her daughter Chloe to help her with some research down the archives. Chloe asks:

"Will you put every little thing I say in the book?"... "Is that why you've been asking me all these questions?"

"How d'you mean?

"I know you, you're going to write: "'Oh I wonder who lived in our house?" said Chloe, standing in the street reciting poetry."

I laugh. 'Why on earth would I say that you were naked?'

"I know the way you write. You'll put anything in for effect."'

I don't know about anyone else but this is a 12 year old girl talking (the book came out in 2004) - I find that remarkably perceptive!!

Another bit deals with our beloved Jake in character as the surly, grunting teenager - I guess about 14/15. They've been having a battle with him about going outside on a hot day wearing Jeans and thick socks. They are worried he will get heatstroke. Both the Myerson parents are involved and are taking quite a "firm" stance with this outrageous behaviour, refusing to let him out unless he changes into shorts. His father says he's grounded.

'Jake looks close to tears...he pushes out a shiny, purplish bottom lip, unsure of what the next line of rebellion should be. Weeping or shouting? Toddler or teenager?

'You guys!' he blurts out, flinging his hot body down in the armchair. 'You want to ruin my life, don't you?'

The argument continues with Jake ending up shattered and in tears. He stomps up to his room and slams the door "hard enough to make the whole house shudder".

AND THIS IS THE BIT THAT KILLS ME! Mother's next thought is not about about her absolutely distraught son. The line that follows the house shaking is this:

'I have a sudden fascinating thought. 'I'd give anything to know how many times all the doors in this house have been slammed since 1872"

Priceless!! And this was her writing about her children un-anonymously - Jake's tantrums under the spotlight in full glory. I bet his mates loved reading about him dissolving into tears.

And finally, in her acknowledgements:

'Writing novels is easy. You just pull stuff out of the dark, cobwebby places in your head and if it doesn't sound so good, or if it embarasses you, you shove it straight back. No One Ever Need Know. But writing about real life demands much more responsibility...I've tried hard not to invent or judge - and if at times I've fleshed out the truth, I can only say I did it with the best intentions, in an honest attempt to recreate a real episode for this or that person's real life...so if I've misrepresented or disappointed anyone, I can only apologise with all my heart.'

I wonder if a similar heartfelt apology will be forthcoming for Jake in the not too distant future?

The real nappies brigade are the scariest. They creep up and ambush you and don't take any prisoners. Kosovo is a picnic in comparison.

Mumsnet Paramilitary Wing: Codename: The Bloody Hand Gang. (Funded by Mooncup).

YEAH YOU MOTHERFUCKERS YOU BETTER MAN UP AND ermmmmmm SHOOT SOME LEAD!!!!!!!!!

(does that sound right?)

<folds pinny>

Paramilitary wing of Mumsnet? Is that what you become a member of when you are too tough for AIBU?

Oh Mrs Flittersnoop - it was reading Home last Summer that made me post on here to ask whether anyone else thought or knew it was Julie Myerson who wrote Living with Teenagers. I am revisiting it just to refresh my memory (and because like another poster said I feel gripped by this whole saga not least because I feel a sense of responsibility for "outing" her!)

One of the things I noticed about it when looking at it again, was that there was a chapter called "The Jamaicans" - I remember feeling quite uncomfortable with it...

Would it be terribly indulgent of me to quote some more from it???

<assembles AK47> did anyone call?

... and just who is "the paramilitary wing of mumsnet"?

Mrs F's DH

I love those books grin

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the Bookseller piece - you're right.

I still think it's coincidence about the reissue of LWT being "timed" to fit with this. If this had all been planned in the sense that Ponders is talking about a) the mainstream media campaign would have been started nearer to publication of The Lost Child and b) the two pub dates would have been closer together.

IMO this is a cockup which happened to occur near Headline's pub date, not a carefully orchestrated campaign.

Aw, thanks subtlemouse! smile

My DH "IS" Prof. Branestawm you see. I have posted elsewhere on MN about the joys of living in an uber-geek household!

Right - back on topic........)

Has anyone here read Myerson's book "Home"? It's the only thing I've read by her apart from the newspaper stuff. I thought it was an interesting premise for a book, the history of the house they bought when the children were very small, wanting to create a perfect family home. It sheds a revealing light on her attitudes and values.

She was VERY surprised when she discovered her home had been a boarding house for West Indian immigrants during the 1950's and 1960's. It never seems to have occurred to her that people "not like us" could have lived in "her" tastefully re-modelled little bubble of a dream home.

I didn't think the PR storm was started by her son, at least not directly. The way I understood it The Bookseller did an article on the book, which was picked up by the newspapers, and some journalists got hold of Jake Myerson through facebook.

sorry, xposted with your last!

I bet Headline are rubbing their hands though - and hastily reprinting grin

the republication date is a bit of a coincidence but pbs are usually republished about 12 months after the hardback, it's not an unusual date to choose - and as far as I can make out the PR storm was started by her son, not her, so I don't think this row was engineered to break out around republication.

I would hazard a guess that it's possible that it was the reissue of LWT that made Jake cross enough to go to the Daily Mail - but that's a blind guess, it might be just coincidence.

Not sure what you mean about the change of title - the old edition was called Living with Teenagers too...?

Oh, cancel b) I hadn't registered that it was also called that before, I thought it was just 3 kids etc.

<shambles away, muttering>

Oh so it does, Daisy - damn, another good theory bites the dust grin

However...IMO it's still intriguing that

a) they decided to re-publish at the same time as the brought-forward publication of the Lost Child &

b) they changed the title for the new edition to "Living with Teenagers" to match the column

It suggests some intensive behind-the-scenes manoeuvring going on, don't you think?

Mrs F - totally off topic, but I love your name: the good professor is required reading here!

Ponders I think the new cover was just the standard paperback reissue and still says anonymous. The new cover image showing on Amazon still says Anonymous if you peer closely.

Books are printed about 1 month before publication so there is no way Headline could have anticipated this.

At the most they might sticker the new editions, and reprint when the first edition has sold out.

I've been indulging in some serious schadenfreude all morning, reading the Myerson debate in the Grauniad "Comments is Free" section. DO check it out! (although there are 700+ posts to wade through).

La Myerson is receiving a thorough and comprehensive mauling from the readership she appears to regard as her own. Methinks she has seriously misjudged her audience. Lots of debate as well about the Grauniad's culpability in promoting the ghastly toe-curlingly smug over-privileged fuckwittery that she's been peddling for years.

Her admission that she lied repeatedly to her children about her authorship of the foul LWT column, even after they had been "outed" at school and were suffering as a result, says it all. Hubris.

I used to read that 'Living with..' column and was left with conflicting feelings about the author's parenting skills.

Was she very patient, or very hands off almost to the point of not parenting at all?

Was she a naive sap or simply a gentle person?

She irritated me, but was I just jealous because she seemed to have a 'pollyanna' 'it'll be ok in the end' 'whimsical' approach?

I just found it hard to get a handle on her personality and the maner in which she claimed to parent. It just seemed not to ring true.

I now read her son's claims that she slapped him across the face repeatedly in order to get a key off him, he then hit her back. It seems her column had a very skewed view of how she and her partner approached parenting the kids. I expect her book will have the same skewed viewpoint of the 'drug addiction'.

I really feel for her son, I suspect he will be ok in the end but no thanks to ma and pa.

There are things from my childhood that I remember very differently to the way my sister does, and there are things she remembers which I have no recolection of. She is older so I expect her memory to be different to mine in so much that she was more aware than I was about certain things that were happening.

On the other hand we may well have been treated quite differently by our dad because he had different ways of dealing and interacting with us and also had different expectations of us.

I read the stuff from Myerson's sister and I can see how her dad may have been bitter about the way his wife effectively abandoned him for another man and took his children away without warning.

I mean I remember...

By morningpaper on Fri 13-Mar-09 11:44:15
Amazon only changed the AUTHOR tag from 'ANONYMOUS' to 'Julie Myerson' yesterday

But apparently the publishers issued a new edition with a new cover last Thursday, mp - how does that work, eh? eh? eh?

oh yeah my farmer friends doing dagging at school, when they shave the poo wool off to stop the flies irrc

I wondered if it was that dagging - they do it on the Archers regularly (generally only to sheep afaik)

Thanks, Dandy. I shall stalk her!

Habbibu I know you didn't ask me so excuse me answering, but I was on a thread yesterday/today with OBM (providing OBM = onebatmother??) So she's still around.

The conjunction of your two posts, aitch, made a mental image of pulling shit-caked strands from sheep's bottom. (Much in the manner of Myerson's creative menthod.)

threadie don't start pulling at that loose thread... my whole world will unfurl with it.

<repeats> it's okay to MN it's okay to MN

Perhaps JM is writing her own reviews on Amazon (haven't read them btw).

actually i believe it refers to the shit that is often found hanging off sheep bottoms...

most odd about the reviews. someone call the daily mail. grin

Amazon only changed the AUTHOR tag from 'ANONYMOUS' to 'Julie Myerson' yesterday

<I think they are not on MN these days -- though not flounced I think. I know OBM is v busy. I feel really ashamed for still posting, but each post is just a minute's quick distraction from work -- like chatting round water-cooler in office. <guilty> It's ok isn't it? To waste some time? Offices seem mostly about time-wasting I recall, and the life of the freelancer can be a bit too dutiful.<anxious>

Anon - Publisher: Headline Review (7 Feb 2008)
JM - Publisher: Headline Review (5 Mar 2009)

Curiouser & curiouser...

ha yes daggy = wankerish grin

ooh - ponders! how very odd.

Um - how come reviews dated 7th & 9th March for JM version of book when she only came out about 2 days ago? hmm

Yay! Baudrillard. Iknow some soundbites, but don't really have a grasp of him. Would love to know a bit more. I'm guessing 'daggy' means something like 'wankerish' as used on MN. grin

In the Myerson case there are two separate levels of threat to authenticity -- the family and the media. The first makes sure that there is no common truth, since what really happened is so embedded in conflicting interpretations of what went before. And the second can't really present real events without dressing them up in various sorts of docu-soap conventions.

Perhaps this is a bit daggy (to use an Australian term) but it does remind me of a play Six Characters in Search of an Author, pirandello - there is no fixed truth.

I loved it and it was the start of a different way of thinking which ended in Baudrillard and simulacra - all of which comforts me when confronted with the grasping of truth and authenticity - one could have a field day with this jade and stuff like JM.

not trying to be over the top

Perhaps 'untruthful' is the wrong word. 'Selective memory' may be more appropriate.

Cherryblossoms - I'll look out for you later. You may have a different perspective on it, having escaped this thread for a while, me - I'm still trapped here....

oh, that is funny, Paisley!

odd how the 'anonymous' version is unavailable but the 'Myerson' version is still around.

I would also say our family wasn't untruthful, just the huge differences in our versions is apparent.

It's a jumble, sometimes one person leads the narrative and tries to write or impose their version..

Looking 'living with teenagers' up on Amazon....
"living with teenagers' by anonymous has some mixd reviews
and 'living with teenagers' by Julie Myerson has really good reviews
......has the book suddenly got better?

There were a number of traumatic incidents in my childhood and what's really weird is that I had completely forgotten (or blocked out) quite a few of them. It is only through talking to my sister that I remembered them. Sorry bit off topic but think it's interesting the way memory works ...

Some really interesting points here about families rewriting history and deluding themselves. I find this with my in laws who went through a very bitter and acrimonious divorce - to listen to her now you'd think they were the Waltons.

Good point re. LWT showing the different treatment meted out to her daughter compared to her sons. Wasn't there one hideous column where one of the boys was violent towards the girl and JM just ignored it?

(Hastily defends la famille edam - I wouldn't say mine was an untruthful family, my sister and I differ in remembering the same event but not out of nastiness, just honest/normal but not usually acknowledged human lack of perfection in memory. My father is extraordinary but always wants to believe everything is fine and has been fine and is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He genuinely believes that what he is saying is true.)

Darn! Have to go out. Threadworm and Bagsforlife - hope you're back here this evening. I'm finding this thread works for me like a kind of therapy; a collective thinking effort. Can't believe how it grips me - and revolts me.

BfL - Don't you think it's interesting that mn-ers picked up so quickly the power-stuff involved? Loved Justabout's analogy of gladiatorial contest.

Threadie (may I call you that?) - Love your idea of public space not being simple - different kinds of judgement called on for different "acts" and "contests" and forms of expression within it. What an amazing idea. Raises so many questions.

And your second point is really interesting too. A simple answer to why it's so grim is that we haven't an "eyewitness" view on the events described. But that's way too simple. Also, as you said before, even in the domestic setting there's a vast difference in the power of the narrators.

Sigh. Guess I'll be back, though. B* Myerson and her carcrash book.

I think when you come from an 'untruthful' family, as it appears some of us have (myself included), it makes you even more aware of in advertently giving 'sanitised' versions of events, family bust ups etc.

That is what makes it so peculiar about JM really. I think she has a very odd relationship with Jake, having read excerpts from the novel, she sees him as her contemporary/boyfriend, rather than a mother/son relationship. The bit where she makes him play a song for her on his guitar, whilst leaning on the car bonnet, made me cringe. She seems to need him more than he needs her. Very sad.

<fume> I want to look at Orthodox monasteries.

definitely. And by impossible to grasp I mean impossible for the child, not the parents.

Unless they have some help and space to form their own story.

That is so true Threadworm (must go look at Orthodox monasteries and stop pissing around on the Internet)

It reminds us how important it is to 'debrief' our children when something bad happens -- to let them talk about it and find some shape to it. And not to be too prescriptive in our account to them of what has happened.

It is incredible that a family living in the same house, as ours did, can have such widely different truths when it comes to remembering the past.

Reading JM LWT I can pick strains of a differing treatment she gave her daughter rather than her sons - was pretty awful to her I think -, and can see how this truth would bend for each child.

It feels impossible to grasp in your own family, perhaps easier for outsiders to see it.

I know exactly what you mean, edam. I'm too afraid to even speak to my father of his relationship with my mother. Because he would deny things I know to be true -- and he wouldn't see himself as lying.

When I'm talking to my mother or sister it's amazing how our recall of the same event differs. Even when there's no axes to grind. I've completely forgotten loads of stuff my sister remembers.

And my father is an expert at rewriting history: "Oh, your mother and I were always friends, we never fell out..." Yeah, right, during the endless rows and very bitter divorce and wrangling over maintenance and slagging each other off to us. hmm

Is the judgement that of 'what really happened'? And in what capacity are we called on to make it? It's not as readers of her book, I think, is it. Because we can read in a much subtler way than that, and generally do when reading literature.

Is it as consumers of the newspaper/broadcast explosion? I suppose so, because 'news' is about 'what happened'.

But a more interesting question is whether even as participants we can make the judgement of 'what really happened' in our family lives.

Huge tracts of my childhood family life come under the category of (not contested truth -- that would be bad enough, but at least the contest would be acknowledged, and the project of resolving the contest would seem realisable) but unspoken, unacknowledged happenings which silence makes so amorphous as to be almost indeterminate --- like the unspoken parts of a novel.

lol at hamster and Rubik's cube.

bagsforlife - totally agree.

[whisper - I feel absurdly sorry for her child too - even though it makes me feel like a bit of a muppet for getting drawn in ... .]

Sorry - my post responding to bagsforlife.

Dandylioness - And, you know, I think it's impossible to judge the "truth" of something in fiction. Reading the interview with the sister and having read "Sleepwalking" the only conclusion I could come to was that Julie Myerson is a compelling writer. Her use of language is outstanding, her control of it is well above the average. Her sister's account just lacks the compelling quality of "Sleepwalking". "Truth" is a quality language can bestow; just another literary effect for those of us who are outside the event.

I just think it's weird that we're called on to make some sort of "judgement", when we can't know. And I think that's why it's so weird that, with this new book, she's effectively asking "us" to pass some sort of judgement on the situation with her child. Which is just weird. And unpleasant.

I do think the only "ethical" position is to try and refrain, or to be aware of the problems involved.

Bizarrely, for all her protestations, Shilling's article doesn't climb out of the "ethics of writing" pit, which is such a compelling part of this. Unfortunately, her grasp of the issue is so superficial, it's like watching a hamster deal with a Rubik's cube.

I wondered whether she'd actually read it aswell.

Cynically, I think she's just sticking up for JM as another columnist writing about her teen son, although thankfully she stopped when he started playing up about his Latin GCSE amongst other things if I remember rightly.

Not quite up to James Wood standards.

Did it say v. much about the book - other than that the Mary Yellolly stuff is a bit c*? Do you think she's read it?

TiggyR and beanieb I agree, it depends about the context and it's difficult to judge, I asked the question because I'm not sure myself. I think morningpaper raised a good point, seemed perfectly age-appropriate that at 13 JM didn't like it anymore, and that's what I really question, why her father was still doing it to her when she was 13. I suppose it makes me feel uncomfortable because there is (or can be) a sexual aspect to sticking your tongue in someone's ear that just doesn't apply in the same way to soppy kisses or licking your child's face.

I guess what i'm saying in a clumsy way is that I can see - for many reasons- why JM objected to some of her father's behaviour at certain times.

There's a (favourable) review of the book in the Telegraph by Jane (I used to write about my son Alexander in the Times) Shilling.

Reading that, I thought, well, that IS what dads do, but there DOES come a point when that becomes YUCKY and that's because your own sexuality is developing - and that's when puberty hits and your role with your parents change. It's interesting that she said it struck her as horrible one day when was 13. Because that sounds like the normal development of a teenager to me - growing apart from her parents!

"As an aside, does anyone on here think, like the sister does, that a father sticking his tongue in his daughter's ear (or his son's, for that matter) is 'innocent fun' and just a game?"

actually, yes, it can be. I haven't read the article but my dad used to chase me around the house for sloppy kisses and then lick my face. I'm not saying I really loved it, but it wasn't abusive.

Sorry, talking garbage there - too early! What I meant was it is ^no longer^ about the moral high ground, and all about each trying to trump the other intellectually with all this blood-letting.

Hmmm, I wasn't sure on that one either, Dandy! Not on pubescent girls anyway... But I suppose it's all about context so how can we judge if we were not there? It could be harmless fun, like tickling, or doing that thing where you pretend to bite your kids, like a snapping turtle, to make them scream with mock fright/delight or it could be seedy and deeply inappropriate.

I agree with Bagsforlife, I think Jake is already shaping up to be a novelist. I haven't read all their interviews/writings on the matter but it seems he has gone into competition with his mother over who can most eloqently describe how wretched the other is, and it's turned into a battle of the misery memoirs. For them both now I think it's less about who was at fault and more about who can come out of it with the moral high ground, and looking most clever. They both seem like narcicistic self-ingulgent drama queens to me.

they should all go on Jeremy Kyle "mum why did you hawk me about like a commdity"

That must be tuff for them that they've brought up such an articulate son who can state his case so clearly and persuasively.

It also must be hard to come to terms with your parents' complete fallibility when you're only 20 though.

He's certainly right that in now at last admitting that she wrote the original column it rather upsets their current argument that there was a serious public interest in the book.

"They've stuck their necks out and realised they've made a very bad move,' he says, 'so they are trying to draw attention away from themselves and onto their opponent.
'They are trying to suggest that they published The Lost Child with such innocence, to help other families, to save other children - treating me like I'm some kind of holy sacrifice. But they've done all this before. It's just another betrayal."

MorningPaper is just exercising her natural interest in Jake Myerson this fascinating debate on literary ethics

<whispers>

i have a little crush on cherryblossom now. [damaged]

I like that bird, Boco. I want to adopt it.

I don't believe the sister either. Although I can slightly imagine a father (of my generation's, same as JM) sticking tongue in ear as a 'joke', you only have to read the thread about 'what our parents did' on here to see that. Whether it had more sinister undertones is debateable.

Agree re the crappy parenting.

DandyLioness, it's another example of no boundaries, and how such crappy parenting passes on from generation to generation until someone stands up to it.

Tiresome Myerson has made me laugh a lot.

First illustration for the 'MN Guide to the Myersons' - broken sparrow

Good grief. What next - 'The Myerson kitten: my story'?

Threadworm I think he also wrote books about his children! RD Laing that is.... don't know if it had a bad effect on them though.

As an aside, does anyone on here think, like the sister does, that a father sticking his tongue in his daughter's ear (or his son's, for that matter) is 'innocent fun' and just a game?

LOL @ Julie Tiresome.

I believe her account of her father. Her sister's story didn't really ring true - "Well he did regularly put his tongue in our ears, slag off our mother every time we visited him and cut off two of his daughters without a penny dividing the family even further, but he didn't really meeean it. I love my daddy."

MorningPaper is IN ON IT! She must have a book coming out - the MumsNet Guide to the Myersons.

The thing is we are only following it because we are on here with morningpaper giving us more and more links to the Daily Mail. The vast majority of people have probably not read all the ins and outs as we have, thus being drawn inexoribly into the whole debacle.

bagsforlife - I suspect that may be based in a wish for a "happy ending".

Bizarrely - I just keep on hoping for some kind of "happy ending", too.

I think I prefer my gladiatorial contests to take place in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, where at least the tightrope walkers had safety nets. Not that it helped those down below being mauled by the wild animals.

I want it to stop! [wail]

She is a good and respected novelist. I expect the son will turn out to be a novelist too in the end.

I'm enjoying that younger sister in the Mail. "Keeping the money has nothing to do with greed: it's about ethics."

Yeah, right hmm

It is like a really gory car crash, it makes you look again even though you know it is wrong.

Jeez, I am in the Balkans and I am STILL logging into Mumsnet daily. What happened to my life?

I love that the DM has decided to capitalise on this even more, and reprint the argument between the sisters. So shameless

On the plus side, this story is really cheering me up. It's almost making my family seem normal.

'doesn't so much as gesture towards the debatable, shifting boundary between the two as put on its wellies and yomp through it.'

Har!

meant to say 'gratingly, publicly naive'

Interesting stuff on this thread. That DM article does indeed add to the Tiresome's Fuck Up. But the authorship debate inherent here only makes VERY and horrifically public the kinds of things that go on in families all the time. That contestation of positions is precisely what drives familial conflict. The 'good' daughter, Mini Tiresome in the DM article was gratingly, public. 'I certainly didn't see any violence in my darling daddy...' Right. You didn't see it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen though love: youngest daughters are typically protected from the realities of family dramas. And as we're seeing with poor old Jake's recreation of his mother's traumas, eldest kids have to take the flak full on (as Julie Tiresome apparently has).

Where's a psychotherapist when MN needs one?

having read links of JM writing.i don't like the composition,or the content.not personal reaction to this debacle,but it certainly doesn't give an enhanced representation does it

however,like a media luvvies,she will get publicity and her notoriety has increased.long term she will probably write a book and most likely Jake too

Abraid - yup, separating the writing and the writer and the fictive and the real is soooo important. And I guess that's part of the secret of the occult pull of this news story, in that it doesn't so much as gesture towards the debatable, shifting boundary between the two as put on its wellies and yomp through it.

Threadworm - I like that quote!! I came across the phrase in the course of studying English - so wish I'd come across that R. D. Laing phrase.

Seriously, i am an angry woman. I am living the dark side of celebrity/reality culture. And I am resentful and violent!!!
I object to the fact my emotional responses are pulled into this situation (of which I know little and can do less).

There's a limit to the "turning the page" approach because, the fact is, it's structured so that it's private stuff, in the public sphere - and that is, by definition "our" space. And it's structured to pull intimate emotional responses from us.

We should start a thread of objection - where objectors can hang out and work out why it's so awful. Because, while I did read about some of the articles/research about this culture on the "Jade" thread, it strikes me they don't go anywhere near the emotional ( ... is "damage" too strong a word? ... perhaps ... another one then ... ) effect this has on us, the audience.

Gah! This taste for the authentic is making us sick!

lol Tiresome Myerson!

F**k a duck - I can't believe that he asked her outright after episode 6 whether she was the author and then asked her AGAIN and she denied it shock

- COMPLETELY blows out the water her bleatings about wanting to keep it anonymous to protect her children (but we knew that already didn't we) She knew they were on the case, knew that they were having shit about it at school and still her compulsion was to carry on regardless, collect it all together and make a book and then for good measure write another book. Shocking.

Perhaps Jake is not telling the 100% truth but at least it's his truth and he's getting a voice for once. BUT he has one almighty axe to grind and gawd bless him he's got every right to grind away. But trying to deny him his voice by making out he's a disreputable, unreliable witness to this all is making the Tiresome Myerson just more pathetic.

What will happen to the book though? It was supposed to be being rushed out early - does anyone know if this has happened? Do you think on ANY level this publicity is doing her any good? (A question to all you journos/writers out there - there seem quite a few!)

(am off now to hide the matches...)

I like that phrase "the power involved in possession of the authorised version". Is it an Eng Lit phrase or a psycholog one?

Didn't RD Laing quote the line in hamlet that goes something like 'I see nothing and I see all there is'? To make his point that parental possession of 'the authorised version' drives their children into what gets called psychosis but which is in fact the expression of some de-authorized truth?

(Yes I know he was a loon but it is interesting in present case???)

no desire to read her indulgent blithering

I loved SOMETHING MIGHT HAPPEN.

Whatever else she's done, JM is a good novelist. Sometimes it's hard to separate what we feel about an author personally from what we feel about their books. I've never read Arthur Koestler because he raped a woman during WW2 and I found that so appalling it put me off reading his stuff.

Asking English teachers, that is.

Yes - Osbourne's with 'A' levels.

I've been trawling schools and asking 6th form teachers how/what they teach. At one school, I was told they used the comparison paper to look at the concepts of "hermeneutic suspicion" and "the unreliable narrator" - guess they have at least two more candidates for that now.

I think that is one family that is living a discussion of "the power involved in possession of the authorised version".

Actually, I have to give myself a pat on the back. I read "Sleepwalking" and out of interest, tried to reconstruct what the sister's, suppressed, version of the "event" might be. Ha! I was almost exactly right - though i didn't "get" the mum's "affair".

And I'm still resenting how much i am letting myself be sucked into this!

I prefer Sharon Osbourne, and suspect her kids have a much better relationship with her than JM's do - they know she'll give as good as she gets!

had never heard of JM prior to this debacle and after the publicity have no desire to read her indulgent blithering

traispng her son and his adolescent turmoil through media is icky

how did the drug addled teen give informed consent?

more media miles for the London chaterrati. yawn

lol.

it's fuck up world didn't have the ring.

it is like some bizarro version of the osbournes, isn't it? wasn't the sister's baby gorgeous in the photo? although wouldn't have thought geoffrey would have scored big on the name threads.

ooh, mondo. I've just learned a new word.

ye gods. it's mondo fuck up.

In the article I read, he said that just because he had accepted £1000 from his mother to include his poems in her book didn't mean he had consented to it being published.

I know that's not exactly a lie but it is heartily disingenuous, surely?

Oh God, I've got too involved in this and am beginning to think I know them PERSONALLY and he is, in fact, one of my teenagers friends....hence me sticking up for son much to the chagrin of some people on here.

Still teens are EXPECTED to lie aren't they, unlike middle aged women (unless alcoholics)?

Still, I've been taught a lesson on not to believe what I read in the Daily Mail (wonder how I've managed all these years, not to believe everything in that rag).

holy mother of god

whoever said that they were the chatterati version of the osbournes was spot on.

Another Myerson family ethical dilemma

sorry, I'm agreeing with abraid, not arguing!

abraid, the funniest and most plausible person I ever met was my XSIL.

Even now, she can convince me she is hard working and a devoted mum, when years of knowlege of her ways have proved the exact opposite.

She sounds very truthful, as do many liars and fantastists. Not saying that junior Myerson is a liar, but so decide that he 'sounds truthful' is favouring him with a prejudice not extended to his mother.

I do suspect that Jake Myerson is probably minimising his drug use. But at the same time I wonder whether his parents over-dramatising it. I thought Jonathan Myerson in particular sounded rather cold-hearted towards his child.

Btw, in The Times article yesterday with the interview with the couple, they referred to them as married, but they're not, right?

True Abraid, very true. I know alcoholics too, I know that they lie. But, if he is lying, he's not the only one is he?

It's a horrible, sorry saga for the whole lot of them.

Snort at the idea that the Guardian has withdrwan the LWT archive to potect the protagonists...t make sur that people rush out and purchase the book, more like.

This is hilarious: young lad: reliable, sensible, telling the truth, horrid journo mummy: hysterical, lying, attention seeking.

Unless we know the people involved, how can we know? I heard JM on the radio sounding very sensible and truthful, saying that she showed her son the manuscript and he corrected some of it then said well done and wished her luck.

Perhaps she is a deluded liar and fantasist. Perhaps the boy is.

But attributing talents and worthy character traits to the lad just because he's been 'wronged' is just as bad as labelling him as lazy and a liar becuase he smokes skunk.

As for dittany's 'Jade is talented' theory, I don't know what to say. Jade is a decent person imo and fwiw I think she has every right to sell her story if she wants to. But she isn't talented. Her unique place in the nation's consciousness as the only BB housemate to make real money and stick around for years has nothing to do with her 'talent' and everything to do with the public's obsession with watching people on TV who they deem to be fatter/ stupider/ less worthy then themselves.

Was she exploited or is she exploiting us, that's a fair question, but to say she is where she is due to talent is a logical gymnastic too far.

'He just doesn't come across as a lying boy'

You know what? Neither does my alcoholic SIL. If you met her, you'd think she was the epitome of truth.

One good thing: perhaps this farce will bring an end to the fashion of cutesy newspaper columns of the 'Doh! My Parenting is scatty and My Children do the Funniest Things' variety, that just read like lightly subbed Mumsnet postings.

Even though parading your small children is a bit different from parading your teens, it is a little bit suspect. And anyway I am bored of theose columns.

Does anyone else think tha The Guardian should be a little bit ashamed of the failure to secure proper anonymity in those LWT articles? It was JM's responsibility, I know, but shouldn't the newspaper have checked that enough details were blurred?

but Myerson turned the columns into a book. And you can read extracts on Amazon, on other sites where they've been quoted and even on the Guardian site (although not the full columns).

The Guardian has removed the columns from their archive 'to avoid offence'...

Coming to this debate very late, I didn't even know who JM was before this thread (with a toddler and a nearly FT time most of my news now comes from MN!) but reading that article that MP just linked to the worst part was that JM said as soon as any of the kids found out she would stop writing it hmm

as if that would make it better! Seems like really twisted logic to me. Stopping when they found out didn't erase the humiliation of all of rest of the articles, which incidently, you can't seem to access any more. I tried following some of the links to LWT and they are dead ends.

Btw, can I just say that I love MN, it teaches me things all the time, for instance, while I consider myself to be well educated and articulate, I consistently find myself having to look up long words that some of you use. Today I have learnt what prevaricate means and egregiously (ok, that was from the Will Self article). I am growing as a person! grin

Yes, I do, liath. It's all about her. My teens used to laugh out loud at that column. OK there were elements of nasty teen behaviour that rang true but mainly it was me, me, me. If what Jake says is true, and she also denied it earlier this week in public, lying to him barefacedly again and again about writing that column is absolutely indefensible.

He just doesn't come across as a lying boy (none of that aggressive defensiveness most lying teens have IMO), despite the slightly swaggering teen rebel look (actually not really very rebellious, they all look like that).

As I said at at the very beginning of this thread, before it all got silly and a bit flippant, I feel bloody sorry for ALL her kids. They still have to be at school, doing all the normal stuff probably doing GCSES, AS/A levels,homework, coursework, applying to university, going out clubbing/parties all the usual stuff with all this debacle going on. Its hard enough for them at the best of times to juggle all that.

Its very interesting that none of the kids friends' parents have leapt to the defence of the Myerson parents.

She is the best example in the world of HOW NOT TO bring up teenagers.

Is anyone else starting to wonder if JM wrote the LWT in such a thinly disguised way becuase she actually secretly wanted her kids to read it in the hope that they would think "Oh what a nasty horrible teen I am to my poor martyred put-upon mother" and come to her begging forgiveness?

That would be a great power reversal, turn the tables and put the parents under the spotlight.
Excellent.

I think Julie should shut up and Jake should have his own column.

OOh MP you found that early - do you read the Daily Mail regularly then? wink

PS I am on third teen now and I KNOW what they are like...

Oh dear. Jake does sound VERY sensible in that article. Perhaps he could adopt the younger children.

I thought that too about the girlfriend. By far the worst thing of all this.

It isn't just her own child she's exposed here, either. She's written about her son, when 17, getting his 16 year old girlfriend pregnant and her having an abortion. That's completely disgraceful too, given how identifiable she'll be, and how personal a choice that is.

Ugh.
Hey, I fancy my seceratary!

I have house in happening suburb!

My colleague is a bit mad!

was sartre right? is hell really other people?

Damn, those pointy sweaters are distracting!

Oh no! has the American dream all gone wrong?

you're welcome.

Now in return if someone could summarise episode 3 of Mad Men in the same vein I would be most grateful wink

what an excellent précis the young visitor i LIKE it!

lol. daisy ashford you have an ear for dialogue. quite sumpshous.

arf, and thankyou. Do you think she fancies a MN online chat any time soon?

rofffffffffffle @theyoungvisiter

what was the happy ending? her husband says she's done it to help others. Physician, heal thyself and all that.

Executive summary:

Long preamble setting out The Story So Far with moody shots of A N Actor rolling joints in a dimly lit bedroom and hushed voices reading out sections of book/interviews/articles.

Cut to Paxo, not sure whether he should be in Rottweiler politician mode, or Richard and Judy family counsellor mode.

Paxo: Was it right to write this book?

Myerson: Well but no but yeah but if I could just make this one point no-one in your film has actually read the book.

Paxo: Well I have. Was it right to write this book?

Myerson: Yeah but no but if you could just let me make this one point it's terribly important to me, it was the skunk you see.

Paxo [channelling inner Rottweiler]: Was it right to write this book?

Myerson: Many people have told me this is the story of their next-door neighbour's son.

Paxo [inner rottweiler snarling at leash]: Was it right... [producer whispers in earpiece to remind him that this is a traumatised mother not Gordon on a bad day] I see, how sad for you, oh well, we're out of time.

She did need to wait for a happy ending before putting the book out. They'll have to do that publicly too now that we're all caught up in the story. Or maybe that was the plan anyway.

NO, jemenfous, don't light that cigarette!!

<BOOM>

hey Jen would you like some skunk instead?

Some bloke on the guardian talkboards sold it to me very cheap

why? do you have anything inflammatory to add?

thready, i think the conversation is back on julie now. do you think dittany misrepresented your misrepresentation? wink

Thanks Aitch - I didn't flounce but I have decided not to be such an addict, it's a bit like me giving up smoking, it took me a few attempts but in the end, 9 years later I am a non smoker, soon I shall be a non mnetter grin

...I feel like an arsonist hanging around while the fire brigade turn up - lurking in the shadows. Is it dying down yet??

Has anyone actually watched the Newsnight i/v with her and can give me an executive summary. I need to know, but don't think i have the mental strength to sit through it myself. Or do I need to?

[I'm still laughing about the Guardian talkboard comment that some one posted on the other thread, about Jonathan being too much of a teary wuss to even his his own child...]

I haven't read the thread - have just come back to mn after some time away grin

I did know Julie in my past, she worked for a publishers as the publicity manager, I believe that she would have known what she was doing in writing and pubishing this book.

I personally feel that to subject all her children during their teens/early twenties is incredibly thoughtless. Surely she could have written the book and published it once Jake had 'got over' his addiction.

In my experience she is very much of the current thinking of letting your children dictate as opposed to our childhoods of being dictated to. I am not entirely sure as to who is right, I go for my childhood myself - I'll let you know once my kids are mid twenties wink

Gah. Want to defend myself against dittany's misrep of what I said or implied but I see convo has moved on, and can't be bothered now.

yes THAT sort of gross

Would you wind it's tail to make it work like the ones you used to get on teachers' tables?

Or sharpen your pencil?

Nice try justabout! wink

The cat would give you somewhere to keep your pen though? wink

Myersons' desk seems to be covered in bags and cats

Though the bad desk is much tidier than mine!

Do you think the next episode of the Myerson family saga will include salacious details of their desk policies? (tries vainly to get thread back on track)

Living proof that having a tidy desk turns you ORANGE. The head in hands pose just right for me - it's how I sleep at work.

mp and Habbibus' desks

i am not jealous of your desk, oh no, I have not just run away to the Balkans to escape my own....
Did someone mention cake>? The cake here is crap. Although beer is cheap.

Yes I am being a travel bore, ignore me.

Do you just stick your head in the tin to eat it? In manner of a nosebag?

I like to put my cake in a tin, rather than, say, crumbling it all over my work area

<prim>

Oh, yes, that's it. I just want to lick it, but then remember there'd be no cake crumbs, and so it would be a big let-down.

You are all jealous of my desk

no< perhaps you should get back to tidying your desk<
he he he you will never live this down you know

You're not - though I've just realised that this thread is in adult fiction. Oh, the irony.

I don't think I'm really SELLING it well

ermmm I can't quite remember

I seem to remember thinking it was awfully well written

'Like I said it's not like the Royal Family haven't been pulling exactly the same kind of stunt for years without quite the level of uproar that accompanies someone like Jade Goody. '

Erm...now I'm really lost. Has the Queen been in Big Brother and I've missed it?

Um. Doesn't sound terribly appealing, tbh - is it just shock-value stuff?

oops sorry crosspost

Yes I am still in shock at Clean Desk Revelations too. You have slipped some way down the cool league, yknow....
actually, that is why I am in the Balkans right now, because I can no longer find my desk and I'm hoping if I am 600 miles away Mr Justabout will tidy it for me.

How is she gross? Like, bodily fluids? Or woodlice? those are the only things that really gross me out (the woodlice I mean, I don't mind body fluids in the right context)

I KNOW

I seem to recall that in Me And The Fat man the 'heroine' carries a dead baby in a suitcase for two weeks while it slowly decomposes

THAT sort of gross

Mind you it was YEARS ago that I read this book so I might have completely forgotten the actual story and warped it in my head

Like Will Self type gross? Or horror? And how very sexist of you, mp! The shame...

I'd have thought MN would have kicked any such thoughts out of your head.

<looks around>

<admires tidy desk>

You know she's one of those writers where you think "This is GROSS, this can't possibly be a woman writing..."

MrsGuy, I doubt you are the only one, but given the nature of this thread I think you may find yourself in a minority!

Hmm. what other writers do you like, CleanDeskPolicy? <IBearGrudges emoticon>

yah she's a great writer, dark and creepy! (like a MAN)

i just felt so sorry for the lad...'never done a day's work in his life and he's 20' etc etc. he was in their HOUSE, if they wanted him to get a job, they should've insisted.

Have not the whole thread. Am I the only one that is bored to death with all the publicity this is generating for her book and her pathetic family?

What is very ironic about the whole affair is that it is the Grauniad readers who are deriding her and the DM ones who are applauding her for exposing the horrors of drug abuse. I would put money on her being offered a regular column for the DM.

D'you know, I had never ever heard of JM until all this blew up. Is she actually any good? As a writer, that is - I've done all me own judgin' on her as a parent!

his father eh... I just think, if my DH punched our teenage child, would you want him to write about it in the Guardian? Or see a therapist? I dunno...

aw the Mail photos looked staged though didn't they

"So... let's do a take on the 'arriving to sunday lunch in boxers' thing... you wear your boxers and a flasher's mac and we'll make it look like we're doorstepping you on the way to buying your morning milk. FGS put the copy of the Telegraph back. Buy some B&H's. Look really tired....."

I don't think I'm going to be able to watch her on Newsnight Review now. I feel like I've been peering in her front curtains and seen something I shouldn't have seen. It all seems a bit shameful somehow.

have you seen what he's wearing today, lol?

true, he'll be fine. he'll probably become an author. it says in the mail that the final LWT column was written by her son who was being teased about his lack of pubic hair. nice.

the father seems like a right stuffed shirt as well.

I think we can all be certain that old Julie will be wheeled out whenever a broadsheet needs a "parents view" of middle class drug taking.

I don't think Jake needs any chances given. Something tells me he'll be fine wink

like the gladiators analogy.

poor old jake. i think he'll do well. i'd give him a job if i had one to give. he deserves a good chance.

And meh, meh, mehetty meh to everyone.
[meh]

Yes, I think salome is right. But I also think that the hunger is so intense and has so many outlets that everyone may rapidly become bored and the whole thing will just burn itself out. Leaving JM's crapped up family relationships and young Jake mowing mp's lawn in that dubious nether garment...

if you could try not to hijack every thread with the great big BUT YOU ARE ALL HYPOCRITES line, that would be great too. grin

as i say. not radioactive. back to the discussion.

I think you might be a bit stuck about me Aitch. Definitely skip my posts.

Cultural hunger for inappropriate information. And the demonisation of those who provide it =

I think that is very true, salome. It is all very unedifying, it is the contemporary equivalent of watching gladiators kill each other for entertainment.

I do think that JG's decision is much better than JM, in that Jade has put herself in the spotlight, not her own kids' problems.

hhhmm, yes. it's just that you are so LOUD. but yes, you're right. i should.

i bet you anything she gets a column in the Telegraph or somesuch. no such thing as bad publicity.

Meh yourself Aitch. Try and accept that other people have different opinions to you. Just skip my posts if you think they are getting in the way of your interesting discussion.

I'm quite interested to know what this will do for Myerson's writing career. It's quite possible it might make her radioactive with newspaper editors at least.

it just feels like every time there's a half-way interesting discussion on here, up you pop yelling 'but you are all HYPOCRITES!!!'

meh.

Missed all the Jade stuff, and probably glad I did. And not a lot more to say about JM. But it is interesting our consumption, willing or unwilling, of the daily invasions of others privacy without their consent.

No I'm not Aitch you're imagining things. I said it on the Jade thread and I mentioned it here again because ThreadWorm brought it up and misrepresented what had been said.

But yes the behaviour on the Jade thread did sicken me slightly so I'm probably not over that. Maybe you could say stuck about that. I don't know if it's that bad a thing though.

but what's so obnoxious is that JM acts like she's only done it out of altruism. She's just utterly deluded.

but you are forever going around uncovering snobbery etc dittany. and it doesn't really matter what's actually been said on the thread, you just make it all up to fit. <shrugs>

don't think the cameras were allowed in the reggie office, were they?

We should all go back to reading Philip Roth and John Updike. They put all their lives (and wives) into their novels. They were just clever enough not to use their real names.

Be thankful you don't have Aitch calling you stuck Threadworm.

You said it by implication Threadworm:

"I presume the difference between Gray's diary/play and Jade Goody's publicity is that the former involves hard work to write and produce, and is a piece of art that might be excellent or bad. Rather than just putting yourself in front of a camera."

If the former requires hard work then that implies that the latter doesn't.

What you and others have been cursing Jade for doing, is exactly what is done by other middle class people in the public eye - putting their private lives on public display. There's probably no point in arguing about it any further though as you don't seem to be able to acknowledge the double standards at work here.

We haven't swapped royalty for reality TV. The royals are still putting themselves about - it's as well as not instead of. There is huge interest in William and Harry's lives now plus all the Princess Beatrices etc. Charles still had his marriage to Camilla broadcast on national TV for a whole morning for everybody to watch.

I agree threadworm. the is a common denominator. Cultural hunger for inappropriate information. And the demonisation of those who provide it. But have to agree also with the point that dressing your toddlers up in fairy costumes and splattering them all over the papers is not the same as dissecting your child's life in public. Its about appropriate adult behaviour. Modelling it, if you like. respect begets respect. Or something like that.In some ways we think JM should just have known better, what being middle class and a thinker by trade.

have you seen jake myerson in the dailymail today (online I hasten to add) what is he wearing?
Is he trying to look insane on purpose?!

I didn't mean to exculpate JM at all. She's not a victim. I'm just trying to defend my impulsively made, possibly wrong-headed, but nonetheless to-be-stuck-to-donkeyishly injection of Jade into the thread grin

"the erosion of respect for privacy in the media" - you are having a laugh. Myerson chose to write about the most intimate details of her childrens' lives, got caught out by the kids whose friends had worked out it was them and THEN went on to write an even worse expose of her eldest.

Wasn't it soon after Diana's death that Big Brother etc all started? We swapped Royalty for Reality TV.

"I was just pointing out the snobbery involved in saying one group who are going public about their cancer or other illnesses are hard-working and talented (the middle class ones) whist the other group is lazy and useless and undeserving (the lower class ones). "

Who has said this dittany? I don't think Jade is useless or lazy or undeserving. I just think that her decision to market publicity shots fot the sleb-ogling market is a bad one. And that the media is bad for buying into it.

To the extent that the royals choose to buy into this sort of thing they are culpable too.

Morris made the point that JM might not have expected a media storm about her son to follow the release of her literary novel. The fact that it has made a dirt-digging storm is testimony to the erosion of respect for privacy in the media. Actually the royals did more than anyone to speed that erosion -- Diana's and Charles' marriage and their arguments via 'friends' revelations in media were a huge soap opera. It really isn't a class thing.

ah yes but royalty is much more SOLID

I agree it is similar

the Queen's house is so much nicer though, dontcha think?

Don't you see that they are the same thing morningpaper? The former is just a posher version. There's certainly no merit involved in becoming a royal, just an accident of birth. A bit like all those children of celebs who are always in the papers.

At least Jade Goody made it on her own merits and efforts whatever those might be. The public do see something in her, on the other hand we have no choice about Prince Charles.

But the Royal family are famous BECAUSE they are the Royal family

I don't know why we need a Royal family AND a cult of celebrity though

"She spoke of him with nothing but love."

I expect she did, but love alone doesn't make you a good parent or mean that you do things in the best interests of the child. I think she genuinely believes that she is doing the best thing, but as the parent she should be protecting her child not exposing him to the public. I think she is too needy herself.

oh god, dittany. you are so stuck.

I don't think it is a stretch MZ. TV presenters do it all the time - it is a talent to appear natural and present yourself as a personality in front of the camera - it's why they get paid so much for it, and why Jade does too. Like I said, if it was easy a lot more people would be doing it and they aren't.

I didn't say she was a writer. I was just pointing out the snobbery involved in saying one group who are going public about their cancer or other illnesses are hard-working and talented (the middle class ones) whist the other group is lazy and useless and undeserving (the lower class ones). Like I said it's not like the Royal Family haven't been pulling exactly the same kind of stunt for years without quite the level of uproar that accompanies someone like Jade Goody.

i know - I was comparing Terry Pratchett and John Diamond with Jade Goody, in answer to Thready's post - not to Julie Myerson.

I have fondness for Jade as I used to be really into BB when she was on it, and for all her manifest faults she is a true original and a strong character.

But it's a heck of a stretch to say that she is somehow talented because people take pictures of her. The whole point is that she is only capable of being herself, and that no talent or effort is required.

She isn't a working class version of a good middle class writer. She isn't a writer in any sense at all.

The difference is that TP writes about himself. JM has written about her children arguably without their full and informed consent and arguably illegally. It is simply a matter of law.

on the subject of selling death etc, i note that wendy richards was filming a doc about her chemo when she died. it's on next week i think.

i feel similarly to thready with regard to jade. yes, she's entitled to sell her privacy, but it is the only thing that she does, whereas JD, TP etc have a platform because of their talent. tbh what worries me is the blanket coverage, it feels wrong to me, like our whole society is participating in her poor fucked-up head.

JM otoh, is all about the abuse of her son's privacy.

Habbibu - in the recent TV documentary on Terry Practchett, he mentioned at the start that his wife and daughter did not want to appear on screen and that he would respect that. He spoke about his personal experiences and respected the rights of his loved ones.

But they are middle class hard working and talented Habbibu.

Actually I think Jade has been performing since she was a little child. And I'm pretty sure it is quite hard work doing what she does. She had to do a two hour photo shoot for OK after she got married. Anybody who has ever been photographed will know how taxing that is let alone when you have terminal cancer.

Being constantly on show and being natural about it is a talent, a weird one and probably not one that anybody should aspire to, but I don't think it's easy. Otherwise every BB reject would be famous and I"m pretty sure Jade is actually the only one.

"Jade is famous for being FAMOUS - a relatively new phenomena."

Not at all. That's pretty much what the modern royal family was invented for. They were always inviting us into their lives too - their weddings, their funerals, the birth of their babies, their first jobs.

"because it encourages an appetite for intrusion into private sadness." Tricky, though, Thready, as you might level the same charge at Terry Pratchett or John Diamond, both of whom were lauded for being candid.

I don't know what the controversy is regarding Jade Goody as I'm not interested in it. Can someone summarise?

Jade is famous for being FAMOUS - a relatively new phenomena. And she sells her privacy as a commodity, which she is entitled to do, I think.

Myerson is famous for being a good writer. And as her son has said, she has taken his formative years and turned them into a 'work of art' based on a druggie stereotype and sold that as a commodity. Bit different.

Catkins And also, the Guardian has a much better on-line version than the Sun and a much better archive (not sure if the Sun has an archive ...) There's been many a time I've read things on the Guardian website long after they've been published. So while it's daily circulation might not be so high comparatively, it's effect is more long-term.

I presume the difference between Gray's diary/play and Jade Goody's publicity is that the former involves hard work to write and produce, and is a piece of art that might be excellent or bad. Rather than just putting yourself in front of a camera.

JM's book involves work, talent, etc and in that sense it's different from Jade. But it is "the middle class intellectual version of what Jade is doing". And it does attract shock-horror -- because it cheapens privacy. In JM's case it is her son's privacy that is sold. That is worse of course than selling your own. But Jade's selling of her own privacy is very damaging to media culture -- because it encourages celebrity consumption in place of the hard work and talent involved in other kinds of media content, and because it encourages an appetite for intrusion into private sadness.

I don't see any dual standards, certainly not class-based ones.

Morris made the point that the Guardian does not compare with the Sun in terms of circulation. However I bet it's the newspaper of choice for the family's social circle, and no attempt was made to change any personal details other than names. In any case the kids were identified and mocked by their schoolfriends and terribly upset and betrayed by it. Adolesence is such an embarassing, painful and difficult time. It's hell. To find out that every confidence had been betrayed by your supposed protector in a national paper for two years and all your peer group was reading it? I'd be devastated.

I think that's the reason why the Guardian has pulled those columns Catkin, because people are going to look back and go "Holy hell!".

I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing it as much to protect Julie as her children. After all in their world, everybody already knew it was them.

At the fundamental level they are different. Julie Myerson has betrayed the basic trust between parent and child and done it in a horribly public manner. That's what is being criticised.

Jade on the other hand is being criticised because she has always been a tabloid scapegoat and there is an awful lot of snobbery about her and the people who like her.

This one is truly truly horrible. It's actually scary. You find your daughter being beaten, spat on and stripped by your son and your only reaction is that it's embarassing that the neighbours can hear her screams. It's her fault for fighting back, she's a silly cow, she should strip infront of him, and the son's violence won't be tackled as Julie has to go out in half an hour.

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:njYo-M6CvBEJ:www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/sep/22/fa milyandrelationships.family8+%22living+with+teenagers%22+spit+site:guardian.co.uk&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7 &gl=uk

I read the LWT when it was running. It was utter car crash writing. I was always struck by the level of agression towards the daughter by the brothers that the parents would tolerate.

that should be JM is not entitled to sell her son's

Of course there are differences. Jade Goody is perfectly entitled to sell her privacy, and JM is not entitled to sell her own. But there are similarities too. The media's role, the effect on Jade's children. Similarity doesn't imply identity.

Do you really not see the difference between Jade or anybody else telling their own story and using your children's lives as writer's fodder Threadworm? They are two different things.

They've just made Simon Gray's memoir about his descent into cancer, The Smoking Diaries, into a play which will be touring round the country. Again I'm not seeing any shock-horror about that although it's just the middle class intellectual version of what Jade is doing.

"Most of this thread has been about criticisms of Julie Myerson and what she's done to her son, not some high-minded discussion about privacy"

What she's 'done to her son' is invade his privacy

The two stories are very very similar. They are both about the conversion of private tragedy into media fodder. The same sorts of interesting issues come up on this thread and the Jade thread.

They are important issues. They aren't like discussing the very intimate details of the decline into cancer. The discussion here is exactly about why those sorts of details oughtn't to be touted about, so it is quite consistent with the dislike felt about some of the Jade threadsa.

It's what she's done to her son's privacy though, isn't it? SO it is about privacy iyswim?

that is it's none of my business what other mners discuss.
Clearly neither Jade nor te Meyerson's lives are any of my business really, but... Oh, now it's so complicated!

Actually Threadworm I'd say the Jade thread ran and ran was because a bunch of posters wanted to run off anybody who had any sympathy with Jade and continue the attacks on her (in a clear-eyed sophisticated way of course). They did a good job too, I felt quite sad when I went back to it.

Most of this thread has been about criticisms of Julie Myerson and what she's done to her son, not some high-minded discussion about privacy.

Why on earth would the 'mumsnet police' react the same way to two such wildly different topics? (Jade, Julie M).

I'd say that class has sod all to do with it. One features a young woman dying and the other doesn't.

Dittany, to an extent I agree.
I am foaming at the mouth over this one as a fully paid up middle class Gruaniad reader.
I wouldn't tell anyone not to discuss Jade - it's none of my business - but I didn't get involved.

Well, dittany, there may have been posts about closing discussion of Jade down (though christ knows who the mn police are) but in fact the reason why the jade thread ran and ran was that people wanted to make similar points there as they do here -- about the withering away of privacy.

The constant obsession with them all being pre-schoolers is really odd. did she really not notice them all hitting 8 or 9?

I love Jon Ronson and anyone who says he's awful is clearly deranged. [stare at Aitch]

"Jade Goody has been derided in just the same way and is not middle class -- and her supporters have said 'well she wouldn't get these attacks if she was middle class."

Nope that wasn't the argument on the Jade Goody threads. The argument was that the Mumsnet police were swooping down to try and shut down discussion on the Jade threads because the story is tabloid fodder and thus they believe it is lowering the tone of Mumsnet.

I predicted we wouldn't have the same reaction to the Julie Myerson threads e.g. demanding that they all be kept to one thread, posters being berated because they wanted to talk about it, because it's a middle class story being featured in places like the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and on radio 4's Front Row. I was right. The Mumsnet police don't mind us talking about Julie Myerson - talking about what is happening to Jade on the other hand, very bad indeed.

Also what has Jade done to deserve to get attacked at the moment? She's dying of cancer. Some people don't seem to understand that there comes a point where it is time to lay off the attacks and leave someone be. On the other hand Julie Myerson and her husband are alive and well and have been touting their son's story around to anyone who will listen. They deserve criticism for that.

Aitch, this one is even worse.

Beyond grim, the whole lot of it.

Yes, TD and CC tend to come out of their columns as the twits. Clever move.

Oh, imagine the betrayal.
The Daily Mail! God, that must hurt.

also there's a difference in that a lot of those admittedly not very brilliant parenting columns take the piss out of the writer...something JM doesn't really ahemn do.

He has revealed some very personal things about his dog to be fair. Also, I do not think his relationship with his cat is entirely healthy. There seems to be a certain amount of suppressed hostility on both sides.

Jon Ronson. That's the fella.
I prefer Tim I must say. His poor missus!

Tim Dowling's dog and cat have sold their version of events to The Mail. Apparently the beg him not to publish.

I can't imagine that when CC's kids do become teenaged and self obsessed that they will be quite so happy that their childhood prattlings and silly costumes etc are a matter of national record.

They won't always be little kids who love everything their parents do, as Jake Myerson was until he hit adolescence too, one assumes.

lol, jon ronson. i think his son just begged him to stop because, you know, he's AWFUL.

Yes, Nicky, and I also notice that Tim Dowling hardly ever refers to his children in his column now that they are no longer little.

custy, here's one. 209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:zKUtASedgBYJ:www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/jul/08/familyandrela tionships.family4+%22living+with+teenagers%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

there seem to be three or four columns cached online, all have becca telling julie that she should start being a parent soon... grin

Didn't the guy who did the Saturday column before Tim Dowling pack it in because one of his kids was worried about getting a hard time?

I think there is a difference MZ between fondly chortling at your five year-old's obsession with batman and explaining how you pressured your teenage son's daughter into having a termination* only WEEKS after the event

*insert ghastly example here

Yes, Thready, EXACTLY.
Their teenage souls! Spot on.

And Chris Cleave's children haven't yet reached the age where privacy is such a big issue for them - HE (unlike JM) might have the sense to stop before they do.

His column is dull, anyway.

"Don't worry Jakey babes, only a few hundred thousand saw it" grin

I'd rather have my four-year-old self photographed in The Mirror wearing daft designer clothes and clutching Posh's hand, than have my teenage soul exposed in The Guardian.

As for the ass, I wish. Lost it somewhere along with a very expensive bottle of olive oil I purchased from an old goat herder while mooching around my Tuscan estate.

Oh, LWT was hideous but I'll probably be totally shite as a Mum of teenagers when my time comes. I don't really care about her parenting style though. I do care that she has prostituted her kids for money in a blatant way.
There were things detailed in her column that should never be made public. Mortifying for a kids. It isn't much different than Jordan parading hers about.

But that makes sexism wrong, MZ, not JM right.

The Guardian sells a fraction of the amount of papers like the DM etc, and is dwarfed by The Sun.

The column was in the family section of the Saturday edition, further narrowing the reach.

I mean it's not as if she paraded her personal life in a photo splash in 'Hello' or whatever.

I wonder if Chris Cleave will continue his absolutely brilliant 'down with the kids' column now, after witnessing this shit storm. His column carries his name, and has a photo of him and his kids, albeit in fancy dress.

Somehow I can't imagine a dad taking such a pasting for betraying his kids in print.

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Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?