I said to Frank Russel, 'I could have a book on Gartland if I apply myself.'
His advice, keep the tension up.
'If Gartland is an asswipe, then write about his asswipery.'
Great advice.
I told him that the really nasty stuff he said had been deleted.
'Then make it up.'
He said even if half the stuff I wrote about him wasn't true, 'people will still want to believe it is.'
I said I wasn't sure who was in Gartland's corner but I felt compelled to let the 'real' John Gartland have his say.
He deserved to be heard too.
His review on my book Stan kind of blew me away:
Finished Stan.A perverted tour-de force of dry humour.
Excellent. It cums at you from so many angles . Cool brushwork, loose but conveys a big canvas.Makes me want to get out there among the whores and ladyboys and pipe-fiends again, and that is a true and dangerous recommendation. If I had the funds, I'd be out there now, hahahaha. Bravo.
In Vanya I feel I have met my match in full-blown debauchery, while his narrative is engrossing, tricky, and holds a reader to the end. I love the sparse style. A fascinating gallery of characters moving through it too, offering different perspectives.
Needs a wee extra polish here and there, the odd missing word or typo ... but highly entertaining, really good stuff. Made my morning. Now I could do with a smoke.
If Gartland had really read Stan, and not skimmed through it, he would have read about how pissed off I was with the writer Joe Writeson for stinging me of a couple of hundred bucks.
Maybe Gartland did read about and thought, 'he's a pushover.'
Was Gartland calling me a pervert?
Takes one to know one.
