This kill-your-darling from Wrestliana is about the American literary critic Harold Bloom. In A Map of Misreading and The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom puts forward a theory of how writers come to be the writers they are. It is, he says, because of an agon, an Oedipal struggle, a wrestling match, a war-embrace, with strong forbears […]
When D.H.Lawrence writes of sport, in his essay ‘Education of the People’, he wants agon. Set the boys one against the other like young bantam cocks. Let them fight. Let them hurt one another. Teach them again to fight with gloves and fists, egg them on, spur them on. Let it be fine balanced contest […]
Next in the continuing series of kill-your-darling sections painfully taken out of Wrestliana. The following really hurt. This was written to illustrate the split between intellectual and physical labour. (It’s meant to be very awkward.) The symbolic moment for me, and I knew it was this at the time, came during the summer of 1986. I […]
This kill-your-darling section from Wrestliana is about Samuel Beckett, my love of and ambivalence towards him. Happy birthday, Sam. So, I’m at my desk, who am I fighting right now? Who am I losing to? Sentence by sentence, it’s Woolf, Bellow, Lawrence, Mandelstam. But in figuring myself as a writer? Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), author of […]
In this extended section from Wrestliana, I am on my way up to Carlisle, to have a go at Cumberland Wrestling. I am nervous, and thinking about losing, and getting hurt. I watch a lot of chess videos on YouTube. One of them comes to mind. 23rd March 2016. All the way up, on […]
In the next few weeks, I’m going to post a few blogs containing sections cut from the drafts of Wrestliana. Writers are told ‘Kill your darlings’. These are a few of mine. They’re all about particular people – Malcolm Bradbury, Ali Smith, my family. The first concerns boarding school. 1st October 1981, Top of the […]
This is my all-time favourite image of Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling. It’s a great photograph, apart from anything else. And a great sports photograph. It was taken in 2015 by Jill Robson, who attends most of the summer agricultural fairs (Grasmere, Ambleside, Penrith) where this kind of wrestling traditionally takes place. Apart from the rain, […]
This is the original Wrestliana – my great-great-great grandfather’s history of wrestling (as the oldest and greatest sport in the world) Two shillings and sixpence is what it would have cost you in 1823. In 2018, a first edition will cost you around £800. If you can find one. It’s still available print-on-demand – […]
[This is a different version of the first chapter of the book – currently up on the Galley Beggar website.] The story of my great-great-great grandfather’s life is the best true story I know. It has everything – a strong, handsome, charismatic, tragic lead man (William Litt). It involves crime, disloyalty, poetry, love. It’s a […]
When I was looking for a publisher for my non-fiction book, Wrestliana, I put together this poster. It’s based on the posters that Cumberland & Westmoreland wrestling matches used to be advertised with in the early 1800s. That’s when my great-great-grandfather William Litt was doing his best wrestling. More about him next time. I did […]
tobylitt 
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