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...

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.

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?

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

Argh, ykwim.

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

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

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

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 ... .

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

How funny, Xenia.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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

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 ... .

'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.

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."

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".

Sorry - that sounded over-assertive and bossy.

Really, I haven't a clue.

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

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)

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 ) 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.

Libel is written, slander is verbal, Xenia.

The article Xenia mentions

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