Roald Dahl
Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock
Writer Roald Dahl had perhaps two or three calm years in his life, those right after leaving school, when he worked for Shell Oil. Otherwise, his life was crammed with enough incident to fill three dozen biographies: losing a sibling at a young age, getting severely beaten at school, flying, crashing, spying, marrying a Hollywood actress still in love with Gary Cooper, losing a child at the age of seven and watching another beloved child suffer the effects of a horrific accident, nearly losing his first wife to an unexpected major stroke, sleeping with various famous and beautiful women, conducting a years long affair with the woman who would become his second wife, and, of course, writing books.
It's a lot. To his credit, Donald Sturrock manages to get most of this into this fairly long book, in a dispassionate, clear way. Sometimes too dispassionately: Roald Dahl was, by the accounts related in this book, brutal to his wife after her stroke as he pushed her towards recovery, but Sturrock almost bends over backwards to absolve the guy. He deals with Dahl's pain at losing his eldest daughter - a child both parents later idealized - almost clinically. And because Dahl's son Theo, who suffered a terrible accident with resulting brain damage, is still alive and helped contribute to the book, many issues with Theo are notably glossed over, with the focus mostly on how the accident increased Dahl's interest in brain shunts.
Dealing with Dahl's shifting attitudes towards race is another place where Sturrock struggles - partly because Dahl did. He accepted the concept of British superiority while living in Africa, but later changed his mind and argued for racial equality. When he was accused of racist attitudes in the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory he was horrified, but swiftly agreed to changes after the NCAAP pointed out the problems with the original depictions of the Oompa-Loompas, in a case of unintentional but institutional, unthinking racism. (He had originally planned to make Charlie, its young protagonist, black.) He had several Jewish friends, but did not think kindly of the Zionist movement or various Israeli leaders and said various offensive things. And so on.
A book like this almost invariably becomes a gripping read, even despite - or because of - the name dropping that was the result of Dahl's years of work in DC as a diplomat and a spy, and later his life with his actress wife, split between Hollywood and England. (After her stroke, Frank Sinatra stopped by. That sort of thing.) It also becomes a question of choosing which story might be true: Dahl changed his retellings of past events frequently, and his first wife disputed many of his versions - but disputed these versions after the stroke which by all accounts changed her personality and severely disrupted her memory. Other issues, particularly Dahl's work as a spy, remain classified. Sturrock does his best to reconstruct events; where he cannot, he quotes liberally from interviews with various people who knew Dahl.
Dahl was notorious for fighting with editors, agents and publishers; friends, family members and neighbors; and Britain's Inland Revenue. (I have to note that one common thread in all biographies of writers who lived and published in Britain in the post-World War II years: fighting with Inland Revenue.) But he was also notorious for unexpected and fabulous acts of generosity, of loyalty to friends, and above all, the ability to entertain children.
I'm not exactly sure when I'll be reaching the Roald Dahl books in the Tor.com reread projects - and I won't be reading all of them - but this was a good introduction to the imagination behind them.
Writer Roald Dahl had perhaps two or three calm years in his life, those right after leaving school, when he worked for Shell Oil. Otherwise, his life was crammed with enough incident to fill three dozen biographies: losing a sibling at a young age, getting severely beaten at school, flying, crashing, spying, marrying a Hollywood actress still in love with Gary Cooper, losing a child at the age of seven and watching another beloved child suffer the effects of a horrific accident, nearly losing his first wife to an unexpected major stroke, sleeping with various famous and beautiful women, conducting a years long affair with the woman who would become his second wife, and, of course, writing books.
It's a lot. To his credit, Donald Sturrock manages to get most of this into this fairly long book, in a dispassionate, clear way. Sometimes too dispassionately: Roald Dahl was, by the accounts related in this book, brutal to his wife after her stroke as he pushed her towards recovery, but Sturrock almost bends over backwards to absolve the guy. He deals with Dahl's pain at losing his eldest daughter - a child both parents later idealized - almost clinically. And because Dahl's son Theo, who suffered a terrible accident with resulting brain damage, is still alive and helped contribute to the book, many issues with Theo are notably glossed over, with the focus mostly on how the accident increased Dahl's interest in brain shunts.
Dealing with Dahl's shifting attitudes towards race is another place where Sturrock struggles - partly because Dahl did. He accepted the concept of British superiority while living in Africa, but later changed his mind and argued for racial equality. When he was accused of racist attitudes in the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory he was horrified, but swiftly agreed to changes after the NCAAP pointed out the problems with the original depictions of the Oompa-Loompas, in a case of unintentional but institutional, unthinking racism. (He had originally planned to make Charlie, its young protagonist, black.) He had several Jewish friends, but did not think kindly of the Zionist movement or various Israeli leaders and said various offensive things. And so on.
A book like this almost invariably becomes a gripping read, even despite - or because of - the name dropping that was the result of Dahl's years of work in DC as a diplomat and a spy, and later his life with his actress wife, split between Hollywood and England. (After her stroke, Frank Sinatra stopped by. That sort of thing.) It also becomes a question of choosing which story might be true: Dahl changed his retellings of past events frequently, and his first wife disputed many of his versions - but disputed these versions after the stroke which by all accounts changed her personality and severely disrupted her memory. Other issues, particularly Dahl's work as a spy, remain classified. Sturrock does his best to reconstruct events; where he cannot, he quotes liberally from interviews with various people who knew Dahl.
Dahl was notorious for fighting with editors, agents and publishers; friends, family members and neighbors; and Britain's Inland Revenue. (I have to note that one common thread in all biographies of writers who lived and published in Britain in the post-World War II years: fighting with Inland Revenue.) But he was also notorious for unexpected and fabulous acts of generosity, of loyalty to friends, and above all, the ability to entertain children.
I'm not exactly sure when I'll be reaching the Roald Dahl books in the Tor.com reread projects - and I won't be reading all of them - but this was a good introduction to the imagination behind them.