View Single Post
  #687  
Old 14-03-2019, 21:40
Bryter Layter Bryter Layter is offline
Winterlover
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Hogtown
Posts: 5,718
Quote:
Originally Posted by handbag View Post
Blimey, I thought this fellow was some kind of bot. First thing I've heard about him talking about the book!
He's made a few Facebook or IG comments in relation to questions asked about the delay (I just saw screenshots in passing. I've no interest in this fellow. Lol!). I really don't think he had much input into the book besides perhaps helping sort through the crap they call an "archive". Man, what a massive disappointment this so-called archive is! Seriously, it's the pits! The only bright spots are the letters he wrote to friends and girlfriends which are both extremely adorable and at times, frighteningly worrisome. In particular, a "love letter" he sent a girl he dated when he was 20 pretty much describes a guy deeply traumatized by being in a relationship. Honestly, it's hard to read and horrible to think how terribly conflicted he was between wanting to care for her and grappling with his own massive insecurities.

I'm actually struggling to get through this book and not because it's trash. SHR may be a giant troll, but she's not a horrible writer. I just feel like the curtain has been pulled back a bit and the guy I've admired since my teens has turned out to be not who I thought he was which is ok in certain respects, it's just a bit hard to digest. I'm only on his university years now, but I had a fairly good skim earlier and a few takeaways were...he was kind of a misogynist jerk. I mean, maybe a lot of his hatred for girls (I don't think he ever dated women even in his 20s so I won't mention them) came from his severe insecurities, but a fair bit sounds like he viewed women as either saints or sluts (not entirely surprising given how he would dehumanize groupies to the media). His friends seem to write this off as him being a traditionalist, but if that's true, why did he not expect the same puritanical standards of his male friends? Then there was a letter he wrote to Jo from Thailand expressing his love for her meanwhile he had told a journalist during that trip that he wasn't attracted to the people he slept with ("I like perfectly aesthetic bodies") and then dropped the bombshell info about visiting a prostitute and getting a hand job. Wow! That's pretty messed up! He was also very arrogant in his youth (something to balance the self-hate, I guess) and seemed fairly certain he was going to be famous. Overall though, he sounded like a pretty nice, if not seriously damaged, guy.

As far as the other Manics go, I haven't read any nastiness yet except a recollection from one of Richey's Blackwood friends that the three of them used to think Graham Edwards was a Freemason because he was a successful business person. The implication being that his family were comparatively well off and therefore they must have had nefarious help getting there. Oh and that's another interesting point about Richey! Well at least it is for me. It would appear that he came from the same school of working class hero as John Lennon.
Reply With Quote