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Toy Fights: A Boyhood
Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.
This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.
Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.
This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.
Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.
384 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 17, 2023
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2123 people want to read
About the author
Don Paterson
61 books102 followersDon Paterson (b. 1963) is a Scottish poet and writer. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism, memoir and poetic theory. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, three Forward Prizes, the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador MacMillan. He has long had a parallel career as a jazz guitarist.
He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus.
He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador MacMillan. He has long had a parallel career as a jazz guitarist.
He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus.
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August 17, 2023
"The life we end up with should ideally be far less interesting than the one that got us there . . . The prospect of having a rich and eventful life right now seems exhausting."
What led me to request an arc for a memoir by a poet I've never heard of, I don't know. I just had a feeling it would be worth the read, and it was, mostly. I enjoy memoirs by those close to my own age, as reading about someone else's similar experiences is almost like reminiscing with an old pal. Though Paterson grew up in Scotland, we still have plenty in common, and I really enjoyed the first part of his story as he described his childhood filled with religion, origami, and The Osmonds. I lost interest in the later parts of the book, as the author (who is also a jazz musician) delves quite heavily into music. I love listening to it, but reading about it? Not so much.
Many thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the fun times.
What led me to request an arc for a memoir by a poet I've never heard of, I don't know. I just had a feeling it would be worth the read, and it was, mostly. I enjoy memoirs by those close to my own age, as reading about someone else's similar experiences is almost like reminiscing with an old pal. Though Paterson grew up in Scotland, we still have plenty in common, and I really enjoyed the first part of his story as he described his childhood filled with religion, origami, and The Osmonds. I lost interest in the later parts of the book, as the author (who is also a jazz musician) delves quite heavily into music. I love listening to it, but reading about it? Not so much.
Many thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the fun times.
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January 30, 2023- Here’s a very good book you would probably […] I was going to say ‘enjoy’ but that’s only half the right word - It is enjoyable - funny in places, just beautifully written in others. But it does start with poverty and intergenerational shame and does also end (nearly) with a vividly described schizophrenic episode. It is the most enjoyable literary encounter I have had with either of those things.
- Intentionally or not - it’s also well-timed - Scottish literature at the mo - and realistically for quite a while now - is practically defined by a particular type of story: 70s, council estate, escape, return - whether fiction (Shuggie Bain for instance being a work of fiction marketed as essentially a memoir - which is ethically preferable to the reverse if nothing else), essay (Andrew O’Hagan: LRB), and autobiography (many).
Toy Fights I think is conscious of the terrain it steps out into, the literary context, and the risk of cliche. It’s a book conscious of the register in which it is a writing, willing to unpack itself as it goes along. It’s probably hard to be a good book, about the things it’s about and where they happened, without that awareness. The book explicitly draws out the tension generated by the way the market invites and encourages ham.
- Much of the book is put beautifully. For a poet, it’s more a book that’s obviously careful and aware of its language rather than something I’d describe as poetic or particularly lyrical. Actually, it frequently makes a concerted effort *not* to be these things (and when he borrows from his own poetry, he makes the quotes explicit)
- There’s a real power to the sections where I’m familiar enough with his poems to map across the correspondence - there’s a power I hadn’t appreciated in encountering something you’ve heard once, told again but fashioned differently - the early chapter outlining his father’s character and approach as an accompanist mapping closely onto a poem in last year’s collection ‘The Arctic’.
- It’s worth saying that Don Paterson - though he’s been around and active for an absolute age now, just feels to me like an increasingly major figure in British cultural life, probably to an extent we’ve not fully realised yet- This is the third different medium in which I’ve picked up a Don Paterson book and thought it was one of the best examples of the form I’d encountered (the others being Rain (poetry), and the genuinely monumental The Poem (academic monograph). The latter a £20 purchase which probably taught me more about literature than my entire degree (approximately £30k in the hole still)).
- I think this is one of the great books I’ve read about music. In part because it is really well written and frequently about music. Also in part because I think I’ve got similar taste to him (well, the good bits of my taste anyway - I love much of what he loves: free jazz, Maddy Prior, Robert Wyatt - but i also love Metallica who he apparently hates) and I find that flattering in some way.
- I think the part of this book that’ll stay with me longest is the stuff about his dad. It’s a great music book and also a great dad book, because these things are, to Paterson, kind of the same. There’s a sense in this that what he’s connecting to in the music he likes and responds to most are distinctly paternal emotional associations. I think his dad kind of *is* music to him - a sense enhanced by the note, something touched on in previous poetry, that dad’s connection to music was just about the last thing to go when dementia bit. I’ve read little in my life that touches it for sheer emotional impact.
Don Paterson writes a lot in this about people he loves or loved. The presentation of his dad in this is one of the most finely drawn portraits of love I’ve ever read - all the more impactful for the sense it has of its honesty, of not being idealised. I’d have to reach back to, I dunno, a Tomb for Anatole to find something that hit me in a way comparable.
- It’s an obviously brilliant book which, if a book is a room, comes with its own elephant. For all the book sets out, from the preface on, a hatred of social media, this book - particularly in its footnotes and asides - bares distinct traces of the extremely online.
- This is from the first few pages - I can’t blame Don Paterson for the associations and baggage we each bring to a work of art but ‘radical centrist’ is, to me, less a programme of government and more a distinct sort of person who gets into a lot of fights on twitter. This is followed - at intervals often with not particularly obvious linkages back to the accompanying text - accounts of various sorts of people Don Paterson gets into fights with on the internet (?).
- I got the impression Paterson finds comfort in mapping narcissism (something he is, for fair enough reasons, both openly afraid of and preoccupied by) as a left-right trait, a manoeuvre through which he carves out, rhetorically, an oasis in which he situates himself. Given some of what the book covers, this makes perfect emotional sense to me as a kind of form of self-defence.
- Which is all to say that - the narcissistic personality type he correctly diagnoses as existing in alt-right/‘woke’ left subcultures also absolutely exists in the self-described radical centre - the same performative victimhood finds an expression in the tweets of, e.g., your matt fordes and francis weetmans - an expression that if anything feels all the purer for its lack of a disguising political project.
- But it’s also interesting as an example of one of those funny things about politics - the labels that appeal to Paterson are loaded with associations that repel me, (much as he probably would return that favour if I tried to lay out whatever microlabels I feel suit me best) - but the actual positions and priorities he lays out in detail are all things I basically agree with him on. I guess where we probably completely diverge is that I think, 100%, that a political project that were to try to attempt to advance his priorities and expressed political preferences (which he characterises as centrist) would absolutely be pilloried in the political mainstream as extreme left, and likely subsequently totally dismantled by all the marshalled forces of the British elite (but not - crucially - by internet wokescolds, who would simply persist being annoying online).
- I think, genuinely, that Paterson has mistaken annoying or grating for, like, politically powerful or meaningful. The book keeps taking breaks from being, like, genuinely brilliant to just relitigate some shit from the internet, stuff you get the sense he was really annoyed at that day, whether it relates to what he was writing or not.
- At points, the pivots the book makes verges on shadowboxing. But it also feels like something unsurprising in a poet, which is to say some of it can be read as fuelled by a distaste for imprecision - a tendency online left discourse is undoubtedly given to. (and I do have a vague, not-very-worked-through theory that why so much online left discourse ends up in obscure cul-de-sacs or splinters is because people are generally no longer taught at schools the difference between rhetoric and literal speech, and people end up feeling a peculiar, doomed compulsion to defend or adopt rhetorical positions as though it was purely literal, factual speech. but that’s probably a conversation for another day.)
- I think why some of these asides feel frustrating is because there’s a sense that they’re incomplete. Which hooks back into the shadowboxing point - Paterson dismantles his own uncharitable reads of millennial tendencies or discourse, while doing so often implying he might be minded to say something more controversial which he then declines to set out - inviting us to imagine a comparably much stronger argument or position than he’s actually delivered.
- I accept that Paterson did not set out to write Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse (a book i suspect broadly matches Paterson’s position on ‘offence’ discourse) - but if I was his editor I would have probably suggested that the most spiritually enriching and mentally satisfying way to counter enraging internet discourse is just to ignore it entirely. The worst possible way to respond to stuff that annoys you online is to let it, at intervals, interrupt a book that’s about something else entirely.
- I’ve spent the majority of this write up talking about approximately half a percentage of the book - and really it’s not so much the content of the asides but the fact that they just feel jarring - so totally disconnected from a book otherwise paced carefully and effectively, and frequently at odds with what feels like the flow of the given chapter. It feels like a genuine catastrophe in the editing stage. I left chapters that were alternately heartbreaking and revelatory instead thinking about a random aside at the bottom of page 142 or whatever. Not because I was outraged, i wasnt, but because why is it there! And there again 50 pages later!
- Returning to Schulman actually - I started speculating - appreciating I will never know - that’s potentially why Paterson seems to feel this stuff with an intensity not explained by the surrounding text is because of his background as an academic professional - Schulman’s ‘Conflict’ is most convincing and feels best observed in the parts where it focuses on the challenges of particular trends in ‘offence’ discourse in academic contexts. (See also Mark Fisher).
- I’ve talked way to much about these asides but I genuinely found them compelling (again, not because of what they say but just because they’re there at all).
- I’m just writing this up because I found it interesting. I don’t really know what to rate this book. Maybe 5 stars! It is an intensely moving book. I hope there’s a second volume which, now (as in, then) he’s in London, may explain why he comes off as mildly preoccupied with a certain ‘type’ that generally do not feature in the book but presumably loom(ed) large in future.
- If there is a future edition, collecting the multiple volumes I hope are coming, I’d suspect some of the footnotes would be quietly dropped. For a book that says ‘future classic’ on its dustjacket, it’s just strange and a shame that it fairly frequently seems to tie itself to considerations, unconvincingly drawn, occasionally bizarrely ungenerous, and for no pay off, and that really will date, fast.
*(really minor sidenote: I also take issue with one of these footnotes purely on a matter of fact. Corbyn didn’t lose because he alienated the working class - he (briefly) made Labour membership more working class (and got 40% of the vote in 2017). The very common media projection of Corbynism as a middle-class phenomena really is not born out by data. IMO he lost because his project, around mid 2018 buckled under the strain and simply gave up attempting to impose any discipline (or just recognised they had no means to). The game was over long before December 2019 - he could have won a majority of 50 that night and still wouldn’t have lasted the year in office (even without covid). It was that and he got walked into an electorally toxic position on Brexit (reversing his 2017 position, which was the only electorally viable stance). Corbynism is obviously a case study in political failure but the hows and whys of it are generally are frequently totally misunderstood.)
- Intentionally or not - it’s also well-timed - Scottish literature at the mo - and realistically for quite a while now - is practically defined by a particular type of story: 70s, council estate, escape, return - whether fiction (Shuggie Bain for instance being a work of fiction marketed as essentially a memoir - which is ethically preferable to the reverse if nothing else), essay (Andrew O’Hagan: LRB), and autobiography (many).
Toy Fights I think is conscious of the terrain it steps out into, the literary context, and the risk of cliche. It’s a book conscious of the register in which it is a writing, willing to unpack itself as it goes along. It’s probably hard to be a good book, about the things it’s about and where they happened, without that awareness. The book explicitly draws out the tension generated by the way the market invites and encourages ham.
- Much of the book is put beautifully. For a poet, it’s more a book that’s obviously careful and aware of its language rather than something I’d describe as poetic or particularly lyrical. Actually, it frequently makes a concerted effort *not* to be these things (and when he borrows from his own poetry, he makes the quotes explicit)
- There’s a real power to the sections where I’m familiar enough with his poems to map across the correspondence - there’s a power I hadn’t appreciated in encountering something you’ve heard once, told again but fashioned differently - the early chapter outlining his father’s character and approach as an accompanist mapping closely onto a poem in last year’s collection ‘The Arctic’.
- It’s worth saying that Don Paterson - though he’s been around and active for an absolute age now, just feels to me like an increasingly major figure in British cultural life, probably to an extent we’ve not fully realised yet- This is the third different medium in which I’ve picked up a Don Paterson book and thought it was one of the best examples of the form I’d encountered (the others being Rain (poetry), and the genuinely monumental The Poem (academic monograph). The latter a £20 purchase which probably taught me more about literature than my entire degree (approximately £30k in the hole still)).
- I think this is one of the great books I’ve read about music. In part because it is really well written and frequently about music. Also in part because I think I’ve got similar taste to him (well, the good bits of my taste anyway - I love much of what he loves: free jazz, Maddy Prior, Robert Wyatt - but i also love Metallica who he apparently hates) and I find that flattering in some way.
- I think the part of this book that’ll stay with me longest is the stuff about his dad. It’s a great music book and also a great dad book, because these things are, to Paterson, kind of the same. There’s a sense in this that what he’s connecting to in the music he likes and responds to most are distinctly paternal emotional associations. I think his dad kind of *is* music to him - a sense enhanced by the note, something touched on in previous poetry, that dad’s connection to music was just about the last thing to go when dementia bit. I’ve read little in my life that touches it for sheer emotional impact.
Don Paterson writes a lot in this about people he loves or loved. The presentation of his dad in this is one of the most finely drawn portraits of love I’ve ever read - all the more impactful for the sense it has of its honesty, of not being idealised. I’d have to reach back to, I dunno, a Tomb for Anatole to find something that hit me in a way comparable.
- It’s an obviously brilliant book which, if a book is a room, comes with its own elephant. For all the book sets out, from the preface on, a hatred of social media, this book - particularly in its footnotes and asides - bares distinct traces of the extremely online.
- This is from the first few pages - I can’t blame Don Paterson for the associations and baggage we each bring to a work of art but ‘radical centrist’ is, to me, less a programme of government and more a distinct sort of person who gets into a lot of fights on twitter. This is followed - at intervals often with not particularly obvious linkages back to the accompanying text - accounts of various sorts of people Don Paterson gets into fights with on the internet (?).
- I got the impression Paterson finds comfort in mapping narcissism (something he is, for fair enough reasons, both openly afraid of and preoccupied by) as a left-right trait, a manoeuvre through which he carves out, rhetorically, an oasis in which he situates himself. Given some of what the book covers, this makes perfect emotional sense to me as a kind of form of self-defence.
- Which is all to say that - the narcissistic personality type he correctly diagnoses as existing in alt-right/‘woke’ left subcultures also absolutely exists in the self-described radical centre - the same performative victimhood finds an expression in the tweets of, e.g., your matt fordes and francis weetmans - an expression that if anything feels all the purer for its lack of a disguising political project.
- But it’s also interesting as an example of one of those funny things about politics - the labels that appeal to Paterson are loaded with associations that repel me, (much as he probably would return that favour if I tried to lay out whatever microlabels I feel suit me best) - but the actual positions and priorities he lays out in detail are all things I basically agree with him on. I guess where we probably completely diverge is that I think, 100%, that a political project that were to try to attempt to advance his priorities and expressed political preferences (which he characterises as centrist) would absolutely be pilloried in the political mainstream as extreme left, and likely subsequently totally dismantled by all the marshalled forces of the British elite (but not - crucially - by internet wokescolds, who would simply persist being annoying online).
- I think, genuinely, that Paterson has mistaken annoying or grating for, like, politically powerful or meaningful. The book keeps taking breaks from being, like, genuinely brilliant to just relitigate some shit from the internet, stuff you get the sense he was really annoyed at that day, whether it relates to what he was writing or not.
- At points, the pivots the book makes verges on shadowboxing. But it also feels like something unsurprising in a poet, which is to say some of it can be read as fuelled by a distaste for imprecision - a tendency online left discourse is undoubtedly given to. (and I do have a vague, not-very-worked-through theory that why so much online left discourse ends up in obscure cul-de-sacs or splinters is because people are generally no longer taught at schools the difference between rhetoric and literal speech, and people end up feeling a peculiar, doomed compulsion to defend or adopt rhetorical positions as though it was purely literal, factual speech. but that’s probably a conversation for another day.)
- I think why some of these asides feel frustrating is because there’s a sense that they’re incomplete. Which hooks back into the shadowboxing point - Paterson dismantles his own uncharitable reads of millennial tendencies or discourse, while doing so often implying he might be minded to say something more controversial which he then declines to set out - inviting us to imagine a comparably much stronger argument or position than he’s actually delivered.
- I accept that Paterson did not set out to write Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse (a book i suspect broadly matches Paterson’s position on ‘offence’ discourse) - but if I was his editor I would have probably suggested that the most spiritually enriching and mentally satisfying way to counter enraging internet discourse is just to ignore it entirely. The worst possible way to respond to stuff that annoys you online is to let it, at intervals, interrupt a book that’s about something else entirely.
- I’ve spent the majority of this write up talking about approximately half a percentage of the book - and really it’s not so much the content of the asides but the fact that they just feel jarring - so totally disconnected from a book otherwise paced carefully and effectively, and frequently at odds with what feels like the flow of the given chapter. It feels like a genuine catastrophe in the editing stage. I left chapters that were alternately heartbreaking and revelatory instead thinking about a random aside at the bottom of page 142 or whatever. Not because I was outraged, i wasnt, but because why is it there! And there again 50 pages later!
- Returning to Schulman actually - I started speculating - appreciating I will never know - that’s potentially why Paterson seems to feel this stuff with an intensity not explained by the surrounding text is because of his background as an academic professional - Schulman’s ‘Conflict’ is most convincing and feels best observed in the parts where it focuses on the challenges of particular trends in ‘offence’ discourse in academic contexts. (See also Mark Fisher).
- I’ve talked way to much about these asides but I genuinely found them compelling (again, not because of what they say but just because they’re there at all).
- I’m just writing this up because I found it interesting. I don’t really know what to rate this book. Maybe 5 stars! It is an intensely moving book. I hope there’s a second volume which, now (as in, then) he’s in London, may explain why he comes off as mildly preoccupied with a certain ‘type’ that generally do not feature in the book but presumably loom(ed) large in future.
- If there is a future edition, collecting the multiple volumes I hope are coming, I’d suspect some of the footnotes would be quietly dropped. For a book that says ‘future classic’ on its dustjacket, it’s just strange and a shame that it fairly frequently seems to tie itself to considerations, unconvincingly drawn, occasionally bizarrely ungenerous, and for no pay off, and that really will date, fast.
*(really minor sidenote: I also take issue with one of these footnotes purely on a matter of fact. Corbyn didn’t lose because he alienated the working class - he (briefly) made Labour membership more working class (and got 40% of the vote in 2017). The very common media projection of Corbynism as a middle-class phenomena really is not born out by data. IMO he lost because his project, around mid 2018 buckled under the strain and simply gave up attempting to impose any discipline (or just recognised they had no means to). The game was over long before December 2019 - he could have won a majority of 50 that night and still wouldn’t have lasted the year in office (even without covid). It was that and he got walked into an electorally toxic position on Brexit (reversing his 2017 position, which was the only electorally viable stance). Corbynism is obviously a case study in political failure but the hows and whys of it are generally are frequently totally misunderstood.)
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July 28, 2023*nonfiction - not rating*
𝘼𝙣 𝙪𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨, 𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙞𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜-𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝘿𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 1970𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 1980𝙨.
This is my third memoir of the year, normally I don’t pick them up… but I do want to start mixing some in between my fictional reads. I honestly picked this one up without knowing much, I just liked the cover.
Don Paterson was born in Scotland in 1963, this book talks about his boyhood and the struggles he had to become the poet, writer, and musician he is now.
The book itself is beautifully written and enjoyable. It does talk about poverty and music, there were also some funny moments in between to lighten up the mood. I wasn’t too familiar with Don Paterson beforehand, but I’m so glad I ended up requesting this on NetGalley.
There was an emotional aspect of his life with his father and the connection to music.
While there were some serious topics discussed, this memoir had me laughing and emotional at times. It was beautifully written, and I’m so glad I was able to experience a bit of Paterson’s life through this memoir.
Thank you so much NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for the review eARC in exchange for my honest review!
𝘼𝙣 𝙪𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨, 𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙞𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜-𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝘿𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 1970𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 1980𝙨.
This is my third memoir of the year, normally I don’t pick them up… but I do want to start mixing some in between my fictional reads. I honestly picked this one up without knowing much, I just liked the cover.
Don Paterson was born in Scotland in 1963, this book talks about his boyhood and the struggles he had to become the poet, writer, and musician he is now.
The book itself is beautifully written and enjoyable. It does talk about poverty and music, there were also some funny moments in between to lighten up the mood. I wasn’t too familiar with Don Paterson beforehand, but I’m so glad I ended up requesting this on NetGalley.
There was an emotional aspect of his life with his father and the connection to music.
While there were some serious topics discussed, this memoir had me laughing and emotional at times. It was beautifully written, and I’m so glad I was able to experience a bit of Paterson’s life through this memoir.
Thank you so much NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for the review eARC in exchange for my honest review!
May 29, 2024
Of all the things on God's great earth Don Paterson has been tasked with doing, poetry is the one thing he is really, really good at. He's a more than passable musician, and can put away tablet like nobody's business but if you were to get a group of people together, let's say a million, no, make it a billion, he'd probably be the best poet at the gathering. So I was quite surprised that after calling his bluff about this memoir having no poetry in it whatsoever, it turned out he was holding trumps, and I alas sweet fuck all.
If you're coming looking for tips from Michelangelo on how to make your shitty water colours really sing, then you're in the wrong place. If however you're interested in the early life that created the internal fusion reactor that drove Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, having already hung the easel up and set the brushes down, then you've come to the right spot.
See this biography is not about poetry but it is about what poetry is about, that is life. It's also about where poetry comes from, again life.
And it seems that next to his monstrous talent for poetry, Paterson also has a considerable talent for prose, memoir and humour.
Unlike probably everyone else who features in Paterson's memoir, he went out and became a man of letters; actually he'd resent that, a man of words. This new found way with words allows him to depict growing up in Dundee as a 'schemie' in a way no other 'schemie' would ever be able to do, partly because, none of them would have enough hubris to do so, and partly because as Paterson keeps reminding us, most of them are dead.
Some of the scenes seemed familiar and of course when I went back to his first collection Nil Nil there they were. An Elliptical Stylus and Amnesia are recounted almost word for word in Toy Fights. Such an interesting experience to read them again, and I now consider them to be the truest truths Paterson has ever trusted us with, having been verified by a whopping two reference points, albeit both from him. The final poem Nil Nil also clearly pulls from his brief flirtation with supporting Dundee United, my initial reading of it had been of the ur football team, but that was mostly because of my ignorance of a team that Paterson reminds us has never lost a game to Barcelona (yes that Barcelona).
As a boy who grew up in NZ in the 90's, I can confidently say I never once heard a John Martyn song. If nothing else I owe a debt of gratitude to Paterson for introducing me to him. The album Solid Air is worth a million listens.
I've said it many times but I think making a reader laugh out loud is one of the hardest things to do. Paterson got me several times. One time I lost it on the bus and some poor old Chinese couple clearly thought I was having a manic breakdown. I've added a couple of passages below that had me in stitches. They're much funnier in the context of the memoir but alone they should at least get a chortle out of you.
Describing a particular musician
The perils of getting tattoos
The lollies of his youth
On playing Trombone in the school band
If you're coming looking for tips from Michelangelo on how to make your shitty water colours really sing, then you're in the wrong place. If however you're interested in the early life that created the internal fusion reactor that drove Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, having already hung the easel up and set the brushes down, then you've come to the right spot.
See this biography is not about poetry but it is about what poetry is about, that is life. It's also about where poetry comes from, again life.
And it seems that next to his monstrous talent for poetry, Paterson also has a considerable talent for prose, memoir and humour.
Unlike probably everyone else who features in Paterson's memoir, he went out and became a man of letters; actually he'd resent that, a man of words. This new found way with words allows him to depict growing up in Dundee as a 'schemie' in a way no other 'schemie' would ever be able to do, partly because, none of them would have enough hubris to do so, and partly because as Paterson keeps reminding us, most of them are dead.
Some of the scenes seemed familiar and of course when I went back to his first collection Nil Nil there they were. An Elliptical Stylus and Amnesia are recounted almost word for word in Toy Fights. Such an interesting experience to read them again, and I now consider them to be the truest truths Paterson has ever trusted us with, having been verified by a whopping two reference points, albeit both from him. The final poem Nil Nil also clearly pulls from his brief flirtation with supporting Dundee United, my initial reading of it had been of the ur football team, but that was mostly because of my ignorance of a team that Paterson reminds us has never lost a game to Barcelona (yes that Barcelona).
As a boy who grew up in NZ in the 90's, I can confidently say I never once heard a John Martyn song. If nothing else I owe a debt of gratitude to Paterson for introducing me to him. The album Solid Air is worth a million listens.
I've said it many times but I think making a reader laugh out loud is one of the hardest things to do. Paterson got me several times. One time I lost it on the bus and some poor old Chinese couple clearly thought I was having a manic breakdown. I've added a couple of passages below that had me in stitches. They're much funnier in the context of the memoir but alone they should at least get a chortle out of you.
Describing a particular musician
He was permanently off-colour, a master of the pre-curtain fart, and was once ejected from the Statue of Liberty by the tour guide for yelling that he'd 'never been this far up a woman'.
The perils of getting tattoos
My brother had two tattooed acquaintances, one of whom got his nickname, 'Yelram Bob', from the drunk forehead tattoo he'd given himself in the mirror; the other got his tat on holiday, at an all-night Malaga ink shop. The Spanish tattooist made a fine job of following his beer-mat instructions to the letter, though, and his forearm bears a perfectly spelled 'Scotland The Brave', under a lovely illustration of our national flower, the pineapple.
The lollies of his youth
Space Dust did the opposite and was ordnance for your face, and actually crushed and snorted by the brave. Space Dust was later banned following the entirely false story that a kid had exploded in gym class when she combined several bags in her stomach with a can of Fanta. This experiment was, of course, aggressively pursued while the stuff still remained on sale. (The theme of extracting more danger than necessary from an already edgy practice is a Dundee cultural meme. My brother would occasionally execute 'The Lochee Slammer'. where you snort the salt, squeeze the lime juice in your eye, drink the tequila, and go to the hospital.)
On playing Trombone in the school band
"In those days the bass trombone had an additional seventh position, one only within the reach of basketball players, statistically few of whom are also brass specialists. But mortals could reach the bottom note by flinging the slide out to a full arm's extension, and then additionally fling out a little ornamentally tooled handle, which would afford you the extra four inches you needed for your deep contra-parp. Anyway, appalled by my up-note, I determined to really make up for it on the descent: I made a gratifying growly downward slide, like a fat motorboat speeding past your ear - then flung the handle out to end on a bing Alpine blart. Only I failed to catch it, and the trombone slide shot off the end, whistled past the ear of the French horn in front of me, and clattered to the floor six feet away. This all took place over about two seconds, which lasted about an hour, hence the detail. To be clear, then: the effect was basically '[Up]-YODELLED FART-[down]-BLAAAAAARRRRGHHHH-shite-CRASH'.
June 5, 2023
Disclosure: I received an ARC of Toy Fights: A Boyhood in exchange for an honest review.
With charming 'pornigami' and melodic fish-out-of-water End of Term Disco ensemble flashbacks, Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson leads the reader on a thrill ride, including, but not limited to: 'Yodeled Fart' takes, 'bottle green cotton magic pants' stories, nocturnal enuresis incentives, and sanitary towel 'chin-sling' exploits. BTW, I longed for prior warning regarding Walter The Pigeon's fate.
With charming 'pornigami' and melodic fish-out-of-water End of Term Disco ensemble flashbacks, Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson leads the reader on a thrill ride, including, but not limited to: 'Yodeled Fart' takes, 'bottle green cotton magic pants' stories, nocturnal enuresis incentives, and sanitary towel 'chin-sling' exploits. BTW, I longed for prior warning regarding Walter The Pigeon's fate.
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May 17, 2023nicely smooth a picture I hear DP saying all along. which is to say it's very good and accomplishes. I have an image of Don as Barry B Benson saying ya like jazz? captain oxford here
April 14, 2024
Don Paterson has long been my favourite contemporary poet, as much for his wit and eloquence as for anything else. I was looking forward to reading this autobiography, not realising that it didn’t even take us up to the beginning of his career as a poet. Nonetheless, I loved it. It was, as predicted, witty and eloquent. It was also hard hitting, self-effacing, and revelatory. As a social commentary about growing up in working class Dundee it was amazing. As a piece of reflective story-telling it was unbeatable.
Don’t read it if you’re of sensitive disposition, though, as it contains many forthright opinions. Sooner or later you will find yourself staring down the barrel of one that contravenes your own, and its eloquent expression will have you doubting yourself. Whether this is to do with the music you’re allowed to like, your social status, the people who are allowed to write poetry, or your religious beliefs, the barrel will be trained on you at least once. He probably only gets away with this by accompanying it with so much self-abasement in his story.
I loved reading Don Paterson’s story, and I loved the manner and language in which it was written. I truly hope that there will be sequel(s).
Don’t read it if you’re of sensitive disposition, though, as it contains many forthright opinions. Sooner or later you will find yourself staring down the barrel of one that contravenes your own, and its eloquent expression will have you doubting yourself. Whether this is to do with the music you’re allowed to like, your social status, the people who are allowed to write poetry, or your religious beliefs, the barrel will be trained on you at least once. He probably only gets away with this by accompanying it with so much self-abasement in his story.
I loved reading Don Paterson’s story, and I loved the manner and language in which it was written. I truly hope that there will be sequel(s).
February 20, 2023
Enjoyed the Scots background but found the musicology a bit wearisome
February 7, 2024
Good in places, boring and self indulgent in others,very funny in a couple. Not bad but not great.
May 1, 2024
I've long been an admirer of the poetry of Don Paterson, one of Scotland's and the UK's greatest living poets. I'm also a fan of his book of aphorisms, in which he targets the pretentious. However in "Toy Fights", a memoir of the first 20 years of his life, there is barely a mention of poetry: his interest in poetry only began when he was well into his twenties. Instead we get a detailed, fascinating and at times appalling descriptions of his childhood in the slums of Dundee. As with his wonderful poetry, his memoir takes no prisoners in its acerbic, pointed and at times hilarious account of the people, places and music that made him.
His anger, dry wit and attention to detail (early on he admits to being a geek) feature on every page and every paragraph. And the memoir is dotted with passages, sometimes as footnotes, where his own uncompromising views come through. In one of the few mentions of poetry, he writes: "Poetry these days is mostly short-form experimental prose". This reminded me of the passage in his book of aphorisms where he raged against the lack of musicality in much modern poetry.
There is much about music in this memoir. His father was a folk and country singer whose club gigs supplemented the family income. Don himself learned to play the guitar (and he describes the various guitars he owned and their shortcomings) and played in various bands, folk-rock, covers band and jazz. In his descriptions of some of the great and flawed musicians he admires -from both folk and jazz, the performance styles of contemporaries he performed with (some of whom died far too young) and his own musical attempts (which he is self-deprecating about) the memoir not only comes alive, but flies.
His account of his incarceration in a mental hospital after his diagnosis of schizophrenia is the most powerful and intimate part of the memoir. He pulls no punches in his descriptions of his illness, of life in the mental ward and of how close he came to being sent to an institution which used electric shock treatment. He has little time for psychiatric professionals and their therapies and drugs, arguing that what really ensured his illness went into remission were the months he spent on the ward resting and not having to worry about the world.
His account of the ubiquity of drug use and its effects on people is also strong and intimate. His first addiction - like so many others - was sugar, which he appears to see as a dangerous substance. He describes prolific drug taking by him and various acquaintances and the toll it took on some he knew.
Less successful is his account of becoming an evangelical fundamentalist Christian. Don is and has been for a long time an atheist, and he puts the blame for some of his later problems at the door of the religious group he belonged to. And although he describes some unusual and possibly dangerous people, I can't see the logic in his blaming of the church. I will have to reread those sections in order to see if I have missed something.
All in all a powerful memoir of his first 20 years, and I'm looking forward to further installments of his memoir.
His anger, dry wit and attention to detail (early on he admits to being a geek) feature on every page and every paragraph. And the memoir is dotted with passages, sometimes as footnotes, where his own uncompromising views come through. In one of the few mentions of poetry, he writes: "Poetry these days is mostly short-form experimental prose". This reminded me of the passage in his book of aphorisms where he raged against the lack of musicality in much modern poetry.
There is much about music in this memoir. His father was a folk and country singer whose club gigs supplemented the family income. Don himself learned to play the guitar (and he describes the various guitars he owned and their shortcomings) and played in various bands, folk-rock, covers band and jazz. In his descriptions of some of the great and flawed musicians he admires -from both folk and jazz, the performance styles of contemporaries he performed with (some of whom died far too young) and his own musical attempts (which he is self-deprecating about) the memoir not only comes alive, but flies.
His account of his incarceration in a mental hospital after his diagnosis of schizophrenia is the most powerful and intimate part of the memoir. He pulls no punches in his descriptions of his illness, of life in the mental ward and of how close he came to being sent to an institution which used electric shock treatment. He has little time for psychiatric professionals and their therapies and drugs, arguing that what really ensured his illness went into remission were the months he spent on the ward resting and not having to worry about the world.
His account of the ubiquity of drug use and its effects on people is also strong and intimate. His first addiction - like so many others - was sugar, which he appears to see as a dangerous substance. He describes prolific drug taking by him and various acquaintances and the toll it took on some he knew.
Less successful is his account of becoming an evangelical fundamentalist Christian. Don is and has been for a long time an atheist, and he puts the blame for some of his later problems at the door of the religious group he belonged to. And although he describes some unusual and possibly dangerous people, I can't see the logic in his blaming of the church. I will have to reread those sections in order to see if I have missed something.
All in all a powerful memoir of his first 20 years, and I'm looking forward to further installments of his memoir.
June 12, 2024
An absorbing and fascinating read. Patterson is a master of opinionated social commentary that is laced on almost every page with metaphoric wit and vocabulary that blew mine out of the water ! So many colourful, descriptive words that stopped me in my tracks.... "she was given to hypocoristic squeaky talk" and ..."in a kind of boustrophedon of stupid..." and "eclamptic Andy Serkis in fish eye-specs..".
This writer has unlimited amounts of verve, wit and panache alive in his playful and vivid diction. He writes describing his demotion in early primary school education as..." from a bright start in Primary 3, I was shunted in peristaltic heaves down this gormless colon like a swallowed brick...". And further on, referring to a fellow pianist musician ..."his left hand was like the upper body of an Irish dancer present but terminally infracted. It crashed and bumped around on the bottom half of his keyboard like a trailer on a loose tow bar.."
As other commentators have stated, the narrative does get bogged down in places with muso name dropping and the internal networking within the mainly Dundee music scene which has minimal bearing for most readers. But this was so much an intricate part of Patterson's world which inevitably provides a lifeline to those early adult years when life became bleak and dark with mental health issues.
Patterson's semi autobiography of his first 20 years of life is a pleasure and privilege to read, a memorable feast of how powerful the English language can be in the hands of a deft and masterly scribe.
This writer has unlimited amounts of verve, wit and panache alive in his playful and vivid diction. He writes describing his demotion in early primary school education as..." from a bright start in Primary 3, I was shunted in peristaltic heaves down this gormless colon like a swallowed brick...". And further on, referring to a fellow pianist musician ..."his left hand was like the upper body of an Irish dancer present but terminally infracted. It crashed and bumped around on the bottom half of his keyboard like a trailer on a loose tow bar.."
As other commentators have stated, the narrative does get bogged down in places with muso name dropping and the internal networking within the mainly Dundee music scene which has minimal bearing for most readers. But this was so much an intricate part of Patterson's world which inevitably provides a lifeline to those early adult years when life became bleak and dark with mental health issues.
Patterson's semi autobiography of his first 20 years of life is a pleasure and privilege to read, a memorable feast of how powerful the English language can be in the hands of a deft and masterly scribe.
January 27, 2024
3.5
Don Paterson made my highschool higher english a living nightmare (I can still recite 11:00 Baldovan by heart) up until covid cancelled all my exams. So, for a hit of self inflicted pain and crappy semi-nostalgia I came back to his stuff. And I'm glad I did otherwise I wouldn't have read this.
While reading it I just felt like I was sitting with my dad and a random uncle. The title made me think there'd be a lot more brutal working class horror to it, but refreshingly there wasn't as is the case with most Scottish literature right now. Nothing wrong with those portrayals but it was a nice change. He doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't, even if I found the segments of musicology and club bands a bit of a drawl, I still appreciate the personality expressed through them.
I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone else (other than a select few chapters), but it felt so familiar and comfortable to me.
Don Paterson made my highschool higher english a living nightmare (I can still recite 11:00 Baldovan by heart) up until covid cancelled all my exams. So, for a hit of self inflicted pain and crappy semi-nostalgia I came back to his stuff. And I'm glad I did otherwise I wouldn't have read this.
While reading it I just felt like I was sitting with my dad and a random uncle. The title made me think there'd be a lot more brutal working class horror to it, but refreshingly there wasn't as is the case with most Scottish literature right now. Nothing wrong with those portrayals but it was a nice change. He doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't, even if I found the segments of musicology and club bands a bit of a drawl, I still appreciate the personality expressed through them.
I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone else (other than a select few chapters), but it felt so familiar and comfortable to me.
September 1, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, possibly because areas of it overlapped with my student years in Dundee and there were mentions of some folk I knew back then. But it was also well written in an easy to relate to style which included many accurate observations of ordinary everyday items, human behaviours or situations with a twist of wry humour. I felt a bit lost in the years where the author was also lost, to mental illness - these were experiences I found hard to relate to, and must have been difficult to write about. I also had my music listening horizons expanded which was interesting. Think I may have finally located the jazz style guitar music playing in a boyfriend’s house back in 1978!
April 29, 2023
I already knew that Paterson was a witty aphorist, and a gifted poet. No surprise, then, that's he's an intimate, entertaining memoirist as well. This book had some laugh-out-loud anecdotes and turns of phrase, as it recounts the first 20 years of his life through the all-knowing eye of his 60-year old self. His forays into religion, drugs, girls, music, and mental illness are all covered in honest detail. My only complaint is that some of the many, many passages about music and musicians threaten to turn parts of the book into NME-style critic's screeds and take the focus temporarily off the author and his own story, where in a memoir, it should in theory remain...
October 21, 2023
This is a hilarious and well-written memoir from the Scottish poet Don Paterson, about growing up in Dundee, Scotland. I loved it, but you should be warned that occasionally the lingo and patter don't follow for an American, and if you can blunder through some of that you also get a lot of deeply-obsessed music stuff, as Paterson is a jazz composer and player. If you are fond of music or guitar, this can be fun, giving you some tips to go listen to. But if you are just a casual listener it can drag a bit. Some of the band and gig tales are outlandish, and, dare I say, almost certainly 'legendary' but still good craic.
December 9, 2023
5 for the writing, 5 for the tone, 5 for the writer's voice. This book had me laughing out loud. I just don't think the structure worked for me, it was scattered, making it difficult to place the time. This was a purposeful choice to represent memory, it's just not how my mind works. I like being able to follow the development of characters. And some of the content felt like mansplaining, particularly the music parts that went on and on with technical, wanky descriptions (he dismisses punk) and name dropping that drifts into the benign. That is to say I am not a musician, and probably not into Patersons taste in music, so if you are you will probably enjoy those parts!
June 9, 2023
Funny. Not actually laughed at an actual book in years.
Roger’s Profanisaurus (my last laugh out loud book) it ain’t, though.
However even during the poverty and mentally ill episodes , he writes so precisely, affectionately, scabrously, funnily.
I rate this one very very highly.
Plus, if you get a chance to hear the author read his own audiobook then do.
His voice and his ‘voice’ will hold you.
Also, you might pick up tips on a few albums you might want to audition.
Roger’s Profanisaurus (my last laugh out loud book) it ain’t, though.
However even during the poverty and mentally ill episodes , he writes so precisely, affectionately, scabrously, funnily.
I rate this one very very highly.
Plus, if you get a chance to hear the author read his own audiobook then do.
His voice and his ‘voice’ will hold you.
Also, you might pick up tips on a few albums you might want to audition.
March 12, 2023
By turns laugh out loud funny, deeply disturbing (the brutality of the corporal punishment at his school was truly shocking), controversial, challenging and, as befits such a successful poet, beautifully written, I found this a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking memoir to read. The author is due to discuss it at Hexham Book Festival in April so I'm now looking forward to hearing his talk.
April 29, 2023
Poet and autodidact Don Paterson's memoir of his early years, growing up in a working class scheme in Dundee. Music was the thing that seemed to propel him forwards when life was stalling for various reasons (God, drugs, psychosis - the usual teenage stuff). Was going to make it two stars for needlessly slagging off Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
July 6, 2023
As a former resident of that great city, reading Don Paterson's memoir of his Dundee boyhood has been a delight. Would have liked to see more discussion of his creative process, and some insight into what made him such an accclaimed poet, but maybe that's all for a future volume? Whatever, Toy Fights is a lot of fun and it deserves a big audience.
April 24, 2024
I admit there were bits I didn’t follow, either because they were about music or were steeped in Scottish culture. But there were plenty of laugh out loud moments to appreciate. He also has a way of writing about poverty, leaving religion, and having a schizophrenic break that is matter-of-fact. Unvarnished, but he finds the humor when he can.
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July 6, 2023The writing in Don Patterson's “Toy Fights” is fizzing-brained and hyperbolic, and it has a hyperbolic effect: It makes you want to delete everything you’ve ever written and start again—this time telling the truth. —James Parker
July 27, 2023
This memoir often made me chuckle due to the author's clever observations and wordplay. I also appreciated his vulnerability in discussing his regrets and his struggles with panic attacks and agoraphobia.
July 7, 2024
I wasn’t familiar with any of his previous work, but was given this as a must-read but my dad, just as he’d done with O Brother by John Niven.
This is similarly hilarious thanks to some caustic Scottish wit.
This is similarly hilarious thanks to some caustic Scottish wit.
Want to read
February 21, 2023Want to read because: recommended on inmyday, love Don Paterson in general.
February 28, 2023
This is my best read this year. It is perfect ... so perfect that I'm going to read it again straight away.
July 7, 2023
Quite possibly the funniest book I’ve read in years. Don has such an astonishing way with words that you find yourself re-reading paragraphs just so you can laugh out loud again.
August 9, 2023
I HAVE to meet Don Paterson
August 30, 2023
I found this book hard to get into. There were so many pages of music talk. I'm glad it's over. #GoodreadsGiveaways
October 9, 2023
Filled with wit, self-deprecating humor and keen observation about the world around him, Paterson wrote a wildly entertaining memoir. I recommend it highly as a tonic to the current clime.
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