I feel just a little bit sick. My vanity as a recently published author causes me to have a Google alert coming in every time something about ME ME ME crops up on the web. One came in just now – and it turned out to be my big Indie piece, published again on AlterNet. I’d seen it there before I think, but what I truly wasn’t prepared for were the comments.
Among the supportive ones, and there seem to be quite a few at least, is an astonishing variety of what I can only describe as spurts of rancid poison from those who consider themselves superior to, well, everybody – but particularly anyone who has admitted their vulnerability in public.
I actually haven’t been able to read them all. I’ve skimmed where I can, but I can’t take any more. This echoes some of the comments on other pieces of mine round the web, and a couple of the reviews that the book got as well. I’ll deal with those in another post, but they are symptomatic of something much bigger and nastier going on all around us.
As an author who has chosen to stick my neck out like this and reveal a lot about my past life, I can’t expect every reader to greet me like a long-lost friend, despite the lovely emails I’ve received from some of you. And, if you write a memoir, someone from your murkier past years is going to get their knickers in a twist, so I have to accept that there are a few of them out there as well. See, for example, my Amazon page, where I have attracted a wee band of professional haters. However, I now see, from exploring further, that anyone who writes a memoir of a bad time gets this treatment from Twisted Up Of Telford.
What’s even more worrying is that some of the poison posse on AlterNet seem to be recovering alcoholics! I find it extraordinary that people buy into the AA/12 step thing to the extent that they take any criticism of it personally, as if their own sobriety itself was under threat. I’m hearing shades of Scientology here and I don’t like it. I particularly don’t like the hopeful taunts from other recoverers that I’ll be back on the bottle soon.
Must people be competitive about things as subjective as depression and addiction? It appears that they must.
Shudder. The good news is that I’ve finally learned my lesson, and I won’t be reading any comments or reviews again, unless someone tells me they’re actually libellous.
annewelsh
March 30, 2008
Dear Tania Glyde
I’ve just finished reading your book ahead of a presentation I am making to a bunch of clinicians on the literary aspect of first person drug accounts. Reading your frustration at some of the comments that have been made on your piece in The Independent, I just wanted to share with you a couple of quotes from Ann Marlowe’s seminal 1999 book ‘How to Stop Time’ as they seem relevant to some of the ‘flack’ you’re facing:
“Our culture has lent dark powers to narratives of drug use. more than to drug use itself, and I am taking advantage of them, like a painter using the severity of northern light.” (p. 280)
“We distrust writing about heroin … almost more than heroin … itself. The structure of addiction is maintained by this taboo about writing about it.” (p. 155)
It’s easy to stand on the edge and throw stones. Not so easy to be on the receiving end. But from a literary perspective, at least your book (like Marlowe’s) says something different and fresh and thought-provoking.
Regards
Anne