Toy Fights: A Boyhood - 'A classic of its kind' William Boyd
Jan 2023 · Faber & Faber
Ebook
352
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About this ebook
Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.
'Devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer
'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant' Scotsman
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Herald on Sunday
This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.
Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.
'Devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer
'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant' Scotsman
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Herald on Sunday
This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.
Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.
About the author
Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador. He also works as a jazz musician.
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