Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster

by Andrew Murray Scott

This new edition of the critically-acclaimed biography of Alexander Trocchi has been revised, extended and updated since its first publication in 1991 when it helped to create new interest in the celebrated - and notorious - author of Young Adam and Cain's Book. It was highly influential, led to the reprinting of his novels and inspired a wave of new writers to discover Trocchi for themselves. A story of heartbreak and pain, the minutiae of squalor, tragedy, obsession, of chemical addictions, sexual experimentations, promiscuity and desertion, suicide - and literary genius. So begins this account of one of Britain's most remarkable literary figures. It traces his childhood in war-time Glasgow, his literary apprenticeship in Paris with Beckett, Ionesco and Sartre, his move to New York then Venice Beach among the leaders of the Beat movement. Trocchi charmed and haunted all who met him. ... a strange and saddening book... Trocchi... experimenting with drugs and sex...left behind a trail of wrecked lives ... at least he has been lucky in this excellent biography which conveys something of his charm and charisma." COLIN WILSON, Literary Review

Genres: Biography

182 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Andrew Murray Scott has written five novels and ten non-fiction books under his full name and most recently the first three novels of the Willie Morton Scottish espionage thriller series written under the pen name of Andrew Scott. Deadly Secrecy and Scotched Nation appeared in 2019 from Twa Corbies Publishing. A third, Oblivion's Ghost was published on 29 May 2020. All three are available in paperback and ebook. Scotched Nation is also available as an audiobook, narrated by former BBC Radio Scotland presenter, David Sillars. Widely reviewed in the print media, the books are acquiring a reputation for the quality of the writing, their neat plots and believable scenarios, derived from Andrew's ten year behind the scenes experience as a press officer for senior politicians in Scotland.

Andrew began writing stories and poems at an early age, but found success initially as a nonfiction author, writing biographies of the leader of the first Jacobite Rising, John Graham of Claverhouse 'Bonnie Dundee' and of Scotland's notorious avant-garde writer Alexander Trocchi among his ten nonfiction titles.

Andrew's big break came in 1999 when he won a major book prize that led to the publication of his first novel, Tumulus. This was well-reviewed and led to more paperback novels: Estuary Blue (2001), The Mushroom Club (2007), The Big J (2008), and In a A Dead Man's Jacket, published as an ebook in 2013.

As a Scottish writer, many of Andrew's books reflect the culture and political experience of people in Scotland. Andrew believes that now is the best time to be a Scottish writer - with exciting developments in the wind.

Andrew's main interest is fiction and he is living testimony that persistence pays off. "You have to work hard at it but mainly you need to analyse the story you want to tell - what exactly is the story? - and then find the best, most concise way to tell it, in a style that complements the nature of the subject matter.

"I've always written because I have to, it's a lifelong compulsion for me and of course hugely enjoyable when it comes out right. I hope it's true that writers get better with age as I have lots of ideas for novels I want to write."

Alongside his literary activities, Andrew developed a media career as a journalist and author, media lecturer and creative writing tutor, having benefited from going to University in his early 40s and spent more than ten years as a media officer for senior Scottish politicians.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trocchi is a natural curiosity to me—an actual Scottish man at the heart of two separate avant-garde movements! The one and only Scottish writer who appears to have taken the teeniest interest in the European literary revolutions of the 50s, and even hung out with the Beats, and fed Leonard Cohen so much opium he passed out while crossing the road in Montreal. How could I not be interested? The short version is that Trocchi stumbled into a literary career, discovering he had a natural aptitude for writing and running magazines and being a pivotal organisational figure among artistic chaos. He also had an aptitude for abandoning and prostituting his wives (to feed his lifelong heroin habit) and found himself a casualty of the counterculture while simultaneously coordinating most of it. His place as a pivotal writer was never sealed since after Cain’s Book he was unable to string a sentence together—the reason being possibly that he had to plunge himself into even rockier bottoms than he had traversed to complete his opus—or that he was lazy, or dried up of inspiration. This bio is readable, if a little rushed (it zips across the 1970s as though a mere blip in the space-time conduum) and insists that Trocchi started each sentence with “like” (in a Scots way, not a teen way), as he may well have done, only I fear the writer is leaning on that vocal tic so never quite brings Trocchi’s voice to the page. You can hear his voice in this far-too-short documentary, featuring Burroughs and Cohen.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The good news: this book did satisfy my curiosity about Alexander Trocchi's life, the Scottish writer who was revered in the expatriate literary scene of 195os Paris, hung out with the Beats, traveled with William Burroughs, co-founded the Situationists, and became, in middle-life, an icon in the British hip and underground scenes. He was a well-publicized junkie (at some point getting his daily doses of heroin and cocaine by prescription), a pimp and a scrounger. And after writing editorials, essays, poems and 2 novels, his literary production dried up in the mid-to late 1960s, after which he seems to have have focused on the ill-defined sigma project. As far as I can make out, that had something to do with the idea that if 1 million creative spirits elevated their consciousness, that the world would miraculously become a better place than the materialist, capitalist, corrupt place it currently was. And so this is essentially a story of a man with some talent who either became a victim of drugs or used the drug addiction to explain the fact that he had written himself out after 2 novels, and then traded on his counterculture credentials to eke out an existence among the Eric Claptons and Marianne Faithfulls of 1970s London.

On the negative side: the amount of typos in this book ! A French street name is wrong. The expression "épater les bourgeois" is correct once, wrong once. Gay Talese's name is spelled as "Gay Taliese" and Lawrence Durrell's as "Laurence". Belgium is spelled as "Belguim". "Dissipates" is spelled with one "s". Trocchi's oldest son dies of cancer of the "nasoprarynx", not "nasopharynx". Furthermore, there are throwaway sentences that stretch credulity. A con man called "Cobra Kelly" marries "The Princess of Holland". What Princess of Holland? Is this a stage name or street nickname? Also, we read that Alexander Trocchi translates the scandalous Dutch novel "Ik, Jan Cremer" from the original into English. Really? Trocchi knew enough Dutch to do that?

I closed the book with a lot of skepticism and an itching in my fingers to take out a red pencil and start correcting the spelling. All reproaches of schoolmistress-y fussiness will be humbly accepted.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 4 out of 5]

trocchi does huncke one better and shoots up on live tv. gives more detail and fuel to the fire that was my curiosity into why this guy isn't a bigger deal in recent lit/art history although still, i want even more detail. man joins my rogues gallery of men in joker arcs addicted to heroin with improbable amounts of interesting life intersections/happenings at maybe the head of the table. a co-founder of one of the 20th century's most important philosophical/art movements and at the same time a man who fed his monster addiction thanks to his wives prostituting themselves. the art pepper of the lit world. IF only the bio was as strong.

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

We could all do to write one really good book.