Petru Iamandi

This book made me nostalgic. It reminded me of my university years, when an Amerindian professor, who was also a poet, introduced us, sophomores, to haiku, telling us about the basics, providing examples and asking us to write at least one “for next time.” We found this Japanese kind of poetry fascinating, to say the least. I for one walked the whole week looking around and trying to find that unexpected moment in nature that I might turn into a haiku. Not being happy with what I saw, I finally gave up and went to the cinema. While watching one of the most thrilling scenes, I saw, together with the protagonist, the moon through the branches of a tree and I said to myself: There is my first haiku! The professor agreed with me. A few years later, when I started my teaching career, I taught my pupils how to write haiku using the same steps: basics, examples (starting with my very first haiku, a classic of course), homework. Not at all surprising, most of their haiku were better than mine, which, leaving hard feelings aside, showed me that the professor’s method worked. Now, while reading Tom East’s book, I was delighted to find the same approach, this time in writing which, obviously, is more difficult to achieve. A clear, rigorous demonstration, an elegant style with cadenced sentences, and, here and there, funny remarks, or irony, or self-irony, ingredients that always make reading more enjoyable. The same can be said about the lexicography and the theory of literature sections of the book. From words with unexpected etymologies to fixed form poetry, Tom East proves his ability to explain convincingly, which is his didactic gift, as he often “speaks” to aspiring writers and “teaches” them how to go about a sonnet or a triolet, for instance. And he is fully entitled to do it, being a well-established author, with about twenty books to his credit (novels, short stories, essays, poems, memoirs, etc.). I remember a handful of critics claiming that a literary work should be judged independently, apart from its author’s background. Tom East shows how wrong they are (and how well-read he is) in the literary biography section, pointing out the crucial events in some of the most famous authors’ lives that shaped their outlook and decisively influenced their writing. So this book should not be read only by young people who dream of becoming famous writers. Students of British literature, English teachers, and those who love reading about literature and its servants will surely find in it a most valuable guide and source of inspiration. If only I had had this book fifty years ago!

“To be perfectly honest, I have little cause for complaint. There are only a few additional things I have to think hard about.” That’s what Tom East concludes after “lightning has struck him twice”. Indeed, he is so detached, so lucid about it that I wonder why he has written this book in the first place. Usually, people, after such ordeals they go through, take advantage of every opportunity to make the most of it, either begging for sympathy or getting what the ancient Greeks called catharsis. Tom East is the exception. His purpose, seemingly, is to give us a lesson (using all the tools of a professional writer) in endurance and recovery, about the strength and resilience one has to find in themselves in order to go back to normal, describing in detail, patiently, his more or less successful efforts, his entertaining experiences, and even providing a medicine of his own device – therapy poems. The overall tone of the book, therefore, is serene and optimistic, prodding readers to take every drama that comes their way as lightly as they can afford to. Tom East is, definitely, a man who has managed to bury the hatchet with his own self. I think we should all do the same.

I’ve always wondered whether what writers do when they write about their childhood is true to life or a blending of truth and fiction. Judging by what I still remember from my childhood, I’d rather go for the latter and say that writing about yourself at such an early age is struggling against the loss of memory, and objectifying something that remains elusive. In its selective nature, an early autobiography is similar to the novel, although autobiographies are based on particulars and novels on generalities. But in the case of an imaginative writer his/her autobiography is likely to be not only a record of events but also an exploration of the personality of the recorder. Therefore, his/her work both narrates what memory selected and tries to account for that selection. Tom East’s book is a case in point. After an excellent introduction called “What is Memory?”, East, more or less avoiding chronology, groups his London memories under various themes, from infancy and “Early Day Women” and school to favourite comics, friends and foes in the playground, the early days of television, childhood pastimes, and the first protests against the Bomb he happened to witness. While reading his book I couldn’t help comparing my own childhood to his (I’m four years his junior), learning that, in many respects, Britain’s postwar experience was not so different from Romania’s (I’m Romanian), both countries having to rebuild their industrial and commercial bases and respond to a new political and economic world order. And that’s what I learned through the grown-up author’s eyes. Through the child author’s eyes, I rediscovered that, basically, children have the same charming “adventurous” life everywhere, not marred by the hardships of adulthood. Obviously, Tom East believes that each and every child’s existence is significant to the world and he manages to prove it with much skill and affection, making the readers relive their childhood. What could be more exciting than that? Petru Iamandi