GrahamBeaconAudio

The author discusses his latest memoir, titled "The Body in the Library," which is the final book in a trilogy. He shares that the book focuses on his experience with stage 4 esophageal cancer and the impact it had on his life. The author began writing as a way to make sense of his diagnosis and to give shape to his narrative. He also reflects on his previous memoirs, which touch on topics such as his abusive relationship with a Catholic priest, addiction problems, and his involvement in left-wing politics. The author expresses surprise at being alive to finish the book and discusses the intertwining of his personal experiences with the political climate in the UK. He concludes by mentioning his desire for a neat narrative arc but acknowledges that it may be left to a future Netflix series. I am an author based in Nottingham and this is my latest memoir called The Body in the Library and it's the third in a trilogy that I started eight years ago with the first book was called The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness and then I followed that up a few years ago with a book called On Agoraphobia and then this one which brings the trilogy to an end and this book charts the build up to and the aftermath of a diagnosis I received in May stage 4 esophageal cancer and I didn't start writing straight away I kind of had to sit with that and that kind of rearranging of my world for a few months and then I started writing and I didn't think when I started that I'd get to finish the book because the initial diagnosis was for 14 months and so I arranged with my dear friend Jonathan Coe that he would finish the book for me as it happened he didn't need to although he has kindly written a forward to this so yeah I finished it about a year ago and it came out in May the end of May I think early June so yeah there's no in the world and what did you know absolutely had to be in this book at a time when you knew it might be the last one? I suppose I didn't start off thinking I was going to do any of this really I just started writing to try and piece back together a narrative that made sense because one minute you are going into hospital for a routine scamp which is what happened I was suffering from hiccups and had a bit of problem swallowing and they thought it might be an ulcer or they thought it might be a thing called Barrett's esophagus and they sent me in for a routine procedure and I went in and they discovered that I had a tumour and within a space of 20 minutes your entire life is exploded your all your assumptions about the future about your body about how your life what your life consists of its priorities and it's its meanings and everything that you you kind of carry with you the baggage you carry with you about how a life looks is suddenly blown completely out the water and so I started writing really to just make sense of it to myself and give it some sort of shape and then as I was doing that I realised that actually in order to do that I then had to bring in things I'd written about in my previous memos and so the first memoir is about my experience of growing up in a working-class community in the north of England in the 1970s but it's important that was a sexually abusive relationship I had with a Catholic priest who was also my teacher and headmaster and partly as a result of that I then developed a whole set of addiction problems and spatial neuroses which I classified under the term agoraphobia which I wrote a second book about and it started to dawn on me as I was writing that actually is my life was clearly drawing to an end or so I thought I had to bring these other things to an end I had to find some way of making sense of the other two books within this one and so really that's when I realised that I'd incidentally written a trilogy I've not set out to do that at all so it was just kind of sense making meaning making and I realised a key part the through line throughout my all of the books throughout my life has been literature I've written books before my memoirs I used to review books I've taught books I've worked in bookshops they have been the thing that's kind of the glue that's held me together and so it is a way of writing about my life as lived through certain kind of investment in culture not just books popular music and cinema and friendships and left-wing politics which I kind of stumbled into in the late 70s through Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League and then which spilled over into the miners strike and a whole series of kind of generation defining moments Greenham Common and C&D and things like that and it started to occur to me that actually I'm part of a generation that in some way is fading out call it the new left or whatever but a certain kind of set of beliefs about culture and politics and social mobility and a kind of oppositional place to be and that has been radically re-altered over the last couple of decades so it was an opportunity to kind of have a reckoning with my own life he says rather grandly that was that's what he became yeah yeah it's so interesting yeah you say rather grandly and yet it's a book that is not grand it's so human and it's so full of these little breadcrumbs of books that I mean I came away with a reading list even before you sent us the reading list for the subscription I'd never read any Anita Bruckner and I was like how has this happened clearly this is someone I want to read you wear a lot of the big philosophy very lightly in the book the way you talk and write about you know contemplating the big questions I haven't read anything like it so thank you for putting it into the world how does it feel to be out there talking about it and how does how does that feel very old because I shouldn't be here according to the diagnosis so I didn't think I'd live to finish the book then I didn't think I'd live to see it published then I didn't think I'd live to see it launched of those things have got a quality of unreality to them yeah in the same way that receiving a terminal diagnosis does you somehow feel as though you are a bad actor in a very poorly written TV drama right yeah sure say they're not quite I suppose in terms of what's in it and what's not obviously I by the time I finished the book the Tories were still in power and it was much more uncertain which way the election would go so in some ways I I don't regret that because it allowed me to kind of focus all my pent-up resentment against the while I was being well whilst I was going through chemotherapy we went through that very weird period of having a different minister every week and a different Chancellor every every other day so I was at the forefront of the NHS which is literally at a state of collapse whilst being gaslit on a daily basis by Johnson Trust Sunic and of course the Queen Diane as well so it was an interesting way of kind of juxtaposing my personal stuff with a more national picture and it's not that I set out to do that but the two things were inseparable I was going into hospital and having chemotherapy and the nurses were talking about the profession the consultant was clearly up against it everyone in the NHS they're talking politics even when they're just talking about their everyday lives those lives are inherited kind of structured by my politics so I don't regret really anything that's in in the book I'd wish I'd yeah there would have been quite a neat narrative arc if I could have finished it when there was a Labour government that there's a certain kind of story tell a bit of me that would like that to kind of dovetail nicely but I'll leave that to the Netflix series which is clearly going to be made about me and based on my trilogy the queuing up my rear though you know my agents thank you so much for that I think that's a that's a lovely note to end on I think it gives a really good snapshot of the book for people to before they dive in see ya see you later