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

[glasjam]

Read this is in today's Observer www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/01/julie-myerson-novel-drug-addiction

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling that I have on learning that she is writing about her son's drug problems? I know that writers often mine their own personal experiences for material but I think she's putting her literary endeavours ahead of her son here. From what I can gather, he is still young, his drug issues are ongoing, and although he is out of the family home, surely this is risking any possible future reconcilliation? I also baulk at the way she "weaves historical research about Yelloly with her disturbing account of her son's ejection from the family home" It just smacks of middle-class-writer angst.

My cynicism is further fuelled by my very strong suspicion that Julie Myerson is the author of Living with Teenagers - but that's another story...

BTW, if anyone still wants to look at the LWT columns, you can still see them if you ask the browser to take you to the cached versions.

it is her! Julie Myerson did indeed write Living With Teenagers.

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/10/family-julie-myerson

Crikey!

See, I agree with lala. The truth is somewhere in between the two of them, it usually is.

And a lot of this is about being a writer, and that must be partly about the way she makes sense of the world, her world, and her life. And I know she shouldn't have gone ahead with this book - or she should have written it and put it away, and waited until the story was over, and he was 36 or something.

But lots of her fiction writing is very unnervingly close to the bone, and I think this is how she sees the world.

I know it's wrong. It's difficult to defend, but at the same time I sort of see how it happened. And I feel for them because it's the most unholy dreadful mess they've made for themselves.

Does anyone think she should have pulled the book?

I do.

I have kids of around that age & I know how they feel about parental humiliation (oops, there goes another one)

Hmm. I'm thinking that too.

I have a few friends who are hugely successful writers. They largely write fiction but a couple of them also write journalism. They are ALL parents. None of them write about their families. That isn't to say they don't draw on their real lives but let's face it, it's a hell of a lot easier to write about your real life than to develop a novel where you have to rely on your imagination. It's bloody lazy.

The book is definitely more about her than the boy - the lost child - her pronoun use is quite telling: lots of I/we [as in her and her husband Jonathan]and quite possessive: my son. She also, in the bit I read, seemed to want the school to step in, not sure how she envisaged them doing this.
I know a couple of friends with similar situations with their sons. Can't imagine that they would find the book particularly useful - they're coping with the same hellish patterns of behaviour but without exploiting it for their own ends - financial, theraputic whatever. If she genuinely wanted to help others, why didn't she offer to support a charity dealing with young people's drug abuse rather than write exclusively for the book-buying, broadsheet reading classes she's so obviously speaking to?

very good point housekeeper

I hated the LWT columns with a vengeance, but a kind of sick, car-crash vengeance that made me keep on reading them. No exaggeration to say they nearly put me off having kids before I'd even started.
But... I like Julie Myerson's novels.
And I honestly don't know what to think about this whole sorry mess except to say it probably shouldn't have been played out in public.
DP's opinion after reading today's Guardian interview with the hubby is that he is a 'lightweight'.
Anyone else think this whole thing has been slightly overblown? I genuinely don't know what to think but will probably buy the book [sucker emoticon].

Well yes, in the extract I have read it is about her experiences of 'losing' her son. So it is about her. Novelists can be solipsistic like that. I haven't read the whole book, so I don't know. There seems to be quite a lot about a girl with watercolours too - so I guess it wasn't meant to be a drug busting expose of her son's life, it just turned out that way.

I agree, in an ideal world she might have known it would happen. In an ideal world, she wouldn't write about her children - or her experience of having children - in quite the way she has.

I don't understand why the Guardian have pulled the columns when there's a book of the columns? Weird.

Yes, I've just cottoned on to the fact that she's admitted it. Am also wondering what will happen with regard to the book. She took a HUGE risk writing the column - one she might have just about got away with - but then publishing this book?? Somewhere along the line her priorities got well and truly screwed up. I am amazed that her own son didn't blow the whistle on her - he was well within his rights to - but as another poster said, he was probably trying to protect his siblings which was to his credit. He's inherited some good sense from somewhere.

lalalonglegs

i agree with your comments but beg to differ over newsnight

I was cringing - it was embarrassing for her. Paxo definitely questioned her motives...

dandylioness

'It does make you want to hit your head against a wall to know that she stopped the LWT column because her kids found out and were hurt, only to then go on to write about one of her kids.'

this sums up my issue with her

Does anyone think that the extreme exposure her son suffered through the LWT column could create such an insecure sense of self that he sought to quash his distress by using cannabis?
Do you think she will apologise? Do you think he could forgive her?

probably so that people have to buy the book ahundred

it's all so dull. She's an eejit. One who made money out of the lives of her family. She probably sensed the end was nigh and capitalised on the whole sorry saga by writing a book. Mad really. But I guess she's the one who will pay the price (with her boy).

Aplogies if someone elses has posted this quote form her husbands piece in the Guardian.

"This is cannabis. It stops you, it rips out normal reactions, normal kindness, normal motivation. It draws a line and you stand patiently behind it. And this is why we have broken one of the most serious prohibitions facing any writer. You Do Not Write About Your Children. Yes, your kids might enter your work now and then in charming disguise but you do not ever lay out their genuine, raw problems on the page. You fictionalise them, you do not present it up-front and true. There is a glass-fronted box in the corner of every writer's room, protecting the real lives of their children: Smash Only In Case Of Emergency.

This is an emergency. "

So WTF was the emergency that necessitated smashing that glass box in order to write LWT? Becuase they weren't "charmingly disguised" there! Honestly this couple seem to be experts in self-delusion.

Liath I know, I know. They just need to shut the fuck up about it now.

And entering your work 'now and then'?!

I read a few of the columns to see what it was all about, and it sounded very familiar, I realised I remember reading it in a book -Living with Teenagers: 3 Kids, 2 Parents, 1 Hell of a Bumpy Ride by... Anonymous. It is out in new format this month.

What is the point in pulling the column, when anyone can buy the book, if they so want to?

It's all terribly sad, victims all, whichever way you look at it

The Times says the Guardian has withdrawn from its on line archieve the LWT columns now to preserve the privacy of those written about.

One issue in general is the extent to which parents have a right to put their chidlren's information in the public domain whether on their facebook page or a newspaper column. A teenager in my view should have the right to consent at 13+. When my children were photographed for a newspaper recently they all had the right to be included or not, all agreed and certanily did not have to. I often don't circulate family photos to my siblings because a child objects to a particular image and before we take photos at home they will often agree or not agree to them being taken and to what uses they can be put.

The wider issue is that some peopel find it hard to regard their children as other than possessions of them. the Gilbran poem I posted above says in effect we borrow our children. We also learn from them and they are different frmo us. That is very difficult for some parents who had children as designer accessories to their lifestyle or who want to live their lives from their children to accept.

"she wouldn't have published the book if she didn't think her relationship with Jake could endure it."

That's telling. Not "if I thought it might hurt, anger or damage my son". Their relationship might survive it, but that's a totally separate issue to whether it might hurt or harm him.

I don't often agree with your posts Xenia but I am 100% behind your last one. I think every parent should read the Gilbran poem.
I am horrified by the amount of people who think their DC is a possession to bend to their will and they even have to think the same way. I can't bear to be in the limelight now, and I certainly couldn't have taken it as a teenager.