Tom Sharpe, the honest man who writes inappropriate things

It was April 1992, and he remained there until the end of June, confident that he would find the philosopher’s stone that would allow him to overcome the satisfying bump in the page that had dragged on for a while. Gradually, with almost no preconceived plan, he left his hometown of England, where he had a wife and family, to focus on creative isolation, which made it easy for him to know neither Catalan nor Catalan and never want to know. Spanish.

Much more than your doctor

stays in lafrance first in that hotel, then in a rented house, they got longer and longer. But this peace of mind wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t met him. Montserrat VerdaguerThe only woman he always called Montsi, perhaps the only woman who knew how to understand him—others said he put up with her—and the only one who didn’t blame him for disappointing her, because she never got tired of having great patience. their uselessness in practical life, their quirks and his stubborn dipsomania.

A psychiatrist by profession, Montsi had her doctor, psychological support, nurse, and secretary all together and introduced him as “my doctor,” but the reality was different. In the last 16 years, she has been his not-so-secret partner among his relatives. In the author’s obituary, British newspaper Guardian He mentioned his widow, with whom he had not officially separated, but ignored Verdaguer. He was also the custodian of various commissions. postmortem: HE claim your legacycreation Tom Sharpe Foundation at the University of Girona and write a biography.

Ten years after the author’s death, his three wishes are fulfilled. pieces of absence (Anagrama), a biography that Verdaguer finally ordered from the writer Miquel Martín i Serra. “Tom – explains Verdaguer – wrote something like this: fragmentary autobiography in the form of letters named Letters to Monsieur Printemps but he didn’t finish the project until it was published today because he believed that if he magically finished that book, he would end up as a writer, and on the other hand, it was impossible for him to talk about his father, a convinced Nazi. and Lord Haw-Haw, friend of British-American broadcaster William Joyce Adolf Hitler during II. World War“.

Faced with this impossibility, she passed the hot potato to her partner and dictated hours of conversation as well. “You’re going to do that,” said Verdaguer, in one of his wild ideas, because I’m not a writer, poor me,” he remembers with a laugh.

Edges and dark areas

All this material was taken over by Martín i Serra, who integrated a large part of the author’s writings and explanations into the work, and was captivated by a character that cannot be summed up by the character of just one character. funny man who writes funny novels. Beneath the clown mask, the biographer has found many edges and dark areas that inevitably taint his writings with wild humor.

there paternal nazism, a highly enlightened Anglican priest who seems extremely decent to a boy named Sharpe, who knows nothing but his political ideas. Shortly after his father’s death, concentration camps Facing reality through watching a documentary about Bergen-Belsen at a very traumatic moment.

“When I found out what Hitler did to gypsies, Jews, homosexuals … I was impressed for the rest of my life,” he told Verdaguer. And he summed up to a reporter, more candidly, in a Sharpean tone: Charles Manson“.

He had no better luck with his mother. Learning that she was pregnant in her late 40s, Grace Sharpe started jumping rope frantically, trying other ways. cause an abortion. The boy insisted on being born, but the woman never wanted him and neglected his care. thick methodical training The slightest sign of affection didn’t help either, so he always felt lonely, being much younger than his older brothers.

The level of intimacy reached in the biography is quite deep. On the side of his partner, there was no censorship against Martín i Serra, who had not made an election. hagiography It is unthinkable for Sharpe even though it was the author himself who left the material and his voice reappears throughout the book. The biographer explains: “Sharpe was not shy about it, anyone who approached him would tell his story.sex drive. He didn’t censor himself either. But the book allows you to enter a dark and private space in life that you do not allow to approach”.

Word misogynyIt is not used in the biography, which accompanies the author many times, but the author is aware of it. Sharpe’s complex relationships with women where men reveal themselves in some games where they are good-natured and timid, at the same time making their life impossible for them and at the same time making them a unbridled sexuality. Because of his mother, he blamed all the women in his life for abandonment, but it’s clear that he has a responsibility for failure after failure,” says Martín i Serra.

To Sharpe, to Verdaguer, who has repeatedly admitted that he is incapable of loving -“Although I adore women, I’m not a very sexy man.“-, during his brief marriage to his first wife, Criquette, he described his impressions of the first time he saw a female genus armed with a flashlight: “I was horrified, it was disgusting.” He also did not hide it. latex fetishinherited from him early childhood masturbation attempts when you discover this rubber band the penis pleasure increased.

marking

panic attacks in general, the impossibility of being part of a silent audience in a theater or church without taking sedatives and drugs. excessive hypochondria highlighted in recent years by really fragile health punished based on booze and alcohol were some of the hallmarks of an unstable character.

It’s well known that humor saved him – he said, ‘better than many psychoanalysts I’ve spent so many serious hours with’ – and the summer that he wasn’t able to dedicate himself professionally until he was 40 years old carries all of his juices back to his years in South Africa. witnessed there apartheid terrorAfter working as a teacher, photographer, social worker, she left evidence in her first two novels. turbulent meeting And inappropriate imagewho discovered it to the general public.

Then the beginning of the saga pallor gave in 1976 universal celebrity with the misfortunes of that insignificant little man who was crushed under the weight of a series of humiliations.

Can be canceled

Can this world of frightening women and frightened men be canceled today? No one, neither his partner, nor his biographer, nor the Catalan translator Màrius Serra had the slightest doubt. Definitely yes. was not his friend political correctness. It was also a c ordealon contradictions. An anti-apartheid activist who enjoyed listening to Nazi songs in her final years. A writer who enjoys popular success and seeks recognition by distinguished critics.

Even his signature style, which Doesn’t shy away from rude humor or rudeness, is contradictory. “It’s true—Martín i Serra notes—he often draws from easy sources, curses from his time in the Navy, but also uses a very elaborate prose product of his own work. study at cambridge and from this conflict emerges his impeccable style.” And to conclude, Màrius Serra introduces a definition that has become the hallmark of that release: “Someone who is completely decent despite writing inappropriate things”.