TOY FIGHTS

The acclaimed Scottish poet chronicles the misadventures of his youth.

In this witty memoir, Paterson (b. 1963), the only two-time winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, revisits his origins in the working-class community of Dundee. Though the author is a celebrated poet, this book contains few references to the writing process. Music is the guiding thread (Paterson is also a jazz musician), and he explores how it pulled him out of his small town, where “for every family on the street, debt was a constant low drone.” As he charts a path through the 1970s and ’80s, he deftly avoids the twin pitfalls of romanticism and nostalgia, instead describing the poverty, violence, and customs of his youth with evenhanded observation and often humor. The titular “toy fight” refers to a childhood game that “was basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext,” violence being as typical to his boyhood as sugar, which included both special treats and “staple forms of sugar, the ones you’d obviously die without.” Childhood led into adolescence through a series of painful school years and obsessive hobbies ranging from origami to guitar. Eventually, Paterson suffered an “acute adolescent schizophrenic episode,” about which he writes candidly. While recovering, his love of music allowed him to chart a future while providing stability and joy. This part of the memoir is the most listlike, deviating into a who’s who of the Scottish music scene, though what the book lacks in narrative connective tissue it compensates for in the plentiful obscenities and vivid descriptions that provide ample entertainment. Punctuating the primary text with frequent and often volatile footnotes, Paterson interrupts his story with rages against a variety of issues, including the “sentimental, fake-aspirational, poverty-celebrating muddle that results when middle-class white folks write black songs.” This memoir is gritty, direct, and alternately doggedly sincere and uproariously hilarious.

A uniquely compelling, expressive memoir packed with explosive asides and raucous insight.