David Peace's Shankly book

[Red_or_Dead]

Not sure if there is a thread on this already (I know someone has a quote from him regarding this book as a signature), anyway, it's released soon and is putting up readings from certain passages:

 

https://soundcloud.com/faberbooks/david-peace-reads-from-red-or/s-bc954

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dead-David-Peace/dp/057128065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374747203&sr=8-1&keywords=red+or+dead

 

Can't fault his choice of title as well.

[WaltonRed]

cant wait for this!!!

[PaulMcC]

It's meant to be amazing.

[WaltonRed]

The film will be unreal too.

[GJM]

When I heard back in January that David Peace had written a book about Bill Shankly, I concluded that I would soon wake from a particularly lucid dream, feeling crushed that this was all a fevered fantasy on my part. And yet here we are, 6 months later, and it seems that it has really happened.

 

I had once wondered whether, one day, David Peace may write something on Hillsborough. It's a subject has all of the elements that seem to occupy him - the corruption of power and the lengths to which people will go to conceal their guilt, human strength and endurance and the search for truth, and, well, football.

 

Not sure that day will ever come, but, in the meantime, this book on Shankly is going to be utterly brilliant.

[Paco]

Cloughs family didn't appreciate how he was portrayed in the damned united and john giles took peace to court over it so I d be a bit cautious about this.

 

I liked the damned United but found gb84 impossible to read

[Paul]

Cloughs family didn't appreciate how he was portrayed in the damned united and john giles took peace to court over it so I d be a bit cautious about this.

 

I liked the damned United but found gb84 impossible to read

 

I'm not sure there's the same scope for criticism though.

 

Just read the blurb on Amazon and it seems to be about how he coped with retirement. Maybe it will be about his demons after all. Probably critical of the club too and possibly even Bob. When I say "critical" I mean portrayed in a negative light as it'll be a work of fiction like the Clough book.

Edited July 26, 2013 by Paul

[xerxes]

Cloughs family didn't appreciate how he was portrayed in the damned united and john giles took peace to court over it so I d be a bit cautious about this.

 

Who wants a sanitised version?

 

Success comes at a price with sacrifice and caualties. Where you have winners you have losers too.

[Moctezuma]

If there is an eventual film them man to play shanks would have to be Peter Mullan for me. He combines a presence, hardness, close approximation of physical features and with a bit of work on the accent and orratory it would be perfect.

[Paco]

If there is an eventual film them man to play shanks would have to be Peter Mullan for me. He combines a presence, hardness, close approximation of physical features and with a bit of work on the accent and orratory it would be perfect.

 

Good shout. I think he has the gravelly scottish accent already but doesnt have the look of shanks. Maybe they could do a darth vader and use his accent with de niros acting

[torahboy]

I enjoyed The Damned United, but the book would have been a bit shorter if Peace didn't repeat, reiterate, re-emphasise - re-emphasise, reiterate, repeat - reiterate, re-emphasise, repeat certain phrases or passages, or passages or phrases throughout his take on Clough's tormented musings.

 

But I am looking forward to this book about Shankly - eagerly anticipating its publication, anxious to read it..........................

[sparta7]

Good shout. I think he has the gravelly scottish accent already but doesnt have the look of shanks. Maybe they could do a darth vader and use his accent with de niros acting

 

 

I'd go for David Hayman

[Faustus]

Is anyone going to that Q&A night with Peace at Epstein's Theatre on 14th August? Really looking forward to it. Should be a cracker.

 

Oh, and Liam Neeson to play Shanks in the movie. I also reckon Tom Hardy could channel the spirit of Bronson for a good Tommy Smith.

[WaltonRed]

I loved GB84, whoever had a go at it, really enjoyed it!

 

I enjoyed The Damned United, but the book would have been a bit shorter if Peace didn't repeat, reiterate, re-emphasise - re-emphasise, reiterate, repeat - reiterate, re-emphasise, repeat certain phrases or passages, or passages or phrases throughout his take on Clough's tormented musings.

 

But I am looking forward to this book about Shankly - eagerly anticipating its publication, anxious to read it..........................

 

Peter Hooton has an advanced copy and says the first half, when he's still boss is full of repetition and stuff, gets over his complete obsession with getting us to the top.

 

If there is an eventual film them man to play shanks would have to be Peter Mullan for me. He combines a presence, hardness, close approximation of physical features and with a bit of work on the accent and orratory it would be perfect.

 

Mullan is my shout too. I hope they need extras for the film, would love to get involved in that!

 

Is anyone going to that Q&A night with Peace at Epstein's Theatre on 14th August? Really looking forward to it. Should be a cracker.

 

Oh, and Liam Neeson to play Shanks in the movie. I also reckon Tom Hardy could channel the spirit of Bronson for a good Tommy Smith.

 

Neeson?! No chance, got to be a jock and oldish!

 

I hope they go for no bodies who look like the players. The Damned United was boss though and this will be in a similar vein!

[Faustus]

Neeson's a red, Mick, you blert! That should be the first requirement to play the great man, never mind nationality!

 

First Oscar win for the fella, I'm telling you!

[WaltonRed]

Ha ha, give it to Mike Myers then if that's your prerequisite for the gig Liam!

[Faustus]

Ha ha, give it to Mike Myers then if that's your prerequisite for the gig Liam!

 

Yeah, baby!

[WaltonRed]

ha ha

[xerxes]

"No American is going to tell me what time it is"

 

How we could do with the great man now.

[Teflon Don]

Here's the review from yesterday's Observer:

 

Red Or Dead by David Peace – review | Books | The Observer

 

Frank Cottrell Boyce

The Observer, Saturday 3 August 2013 10.00 BST

 

 

Red Or Dead is a masterpiece. David Peace already has a considerable reputation but this massive, painstaking account of the career of Bill Shankly towers above his previous work. It's usual when praising a sports novel for critics to claim that "it's not really about baseball/running/beach volleyball – the sport is a metaphor". Make no mistake, this book is about football. Unremittingly, uncompromisingly about football. It's what Shankly would have wanted. For Shankly, ephemera such as life, love and death could be metaphors for football, never the other way round. Football was the thing itself.

 

Red Or Dead tells the story of how an unambitous, conservative board of directors, concerned only with ensuring a profit clicked through the turnstiles, inadvertently hired a charismatic, visionary socialist who revolutionised the game and would like to have revolutionised the nation. Inexplicably – maybe he was bluffing – Shankly tendered his resignation in 1974 while still only 60, and at the height of his success. On YouTube you can find a clip of the young Granada reporter Tony Wilson breaking the news to passersby in Liverpool. They're disbelieving and heartbroken. The board too were disbelieving – in the sense that they couldn't believe their luck. In retirement Shankly was cast aside, made more welcome at Goodison Park than at Anfield. He had no role in the future of the club he created. The phone never stopped ringing but it was never the call he hoped for. Peace gives the rejection of Shankly a Shakespearean grandeur. There are echoes of Coriolanus and Lear but also of the experience of every Premier League fan. For of all the forms of love there are in this world there is none so cruelly, gleefully unrequited as the love of a fan for a Premier League club. Fans will go to the grave decked in club scarves, the club anthem their eternal ringtone. Clubs reciprocate that love in ways that make Enron look like the Salvation Army. The Premier League is not a metaphor of a dysfunctional society, it is its fullest expression – a grotesquely overpaid, underperforming elite utterly disconnected from the communities from which its clubs take their names.

 

Of course, it wasn't like that in Shankly's time. Part of the appeal of Red Or Dead is our collective yearning for those "jumpers for goalposts" days so beautifully evoked in Gary Imlach's book My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes. Here is Shankly living modestly, close to the ground, working out his strategy with cutlery on the kitchen table, cleaning the cooker to clear his mind. Here he is replying to every piece of fan mail, answering the door to kids who want him to come and referee for them, giving them their bus fare home. Here he stops the team's official bus to pick up hitchhiking away fans, ordering his players to share their sandwiches with them. Is this nostalgia? We live in a country in which huge chunks of the public utilities and infrastructure are run for the benefit not of the nation or the customers but for shareholders slumped in front of Antiques Roadshow. Is it nostalgia to remind ourselves that there was once a man who ran a football club not for the sponsors, not for the board, not for himself but for the fans – or, as he called them, the People? And that this worked?

 

There have been more successful managers. Shankly's not even the most successful manager of LFC. The difference between Shankly and, say, Paisley or Ferguson is the difference between Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis. Lewis ran faster but Owens ran for a reason. Shankly's reasons could not be more relevant. Red Or Dead is radical not just in the narrow political sense. I can't think when I last came across a serious piece of fiction or TV drama in which the working-class characters weren't busy killing or abusing one another. Peace himself wrote the novel on which the beyond-parody C4 series Red Riding (aka "Gritty Bafta") was based. Here he has changed tack and written a book about what it means to be good, about the sheer work it takes to be good, about the challenge of staying good when the world treats you badly. Like the Book of Job or The Little Princess, it's a game of two halves. Will Shankly retain as an outcast the grace and integrity he showed when he was a deity? There's a heartbreaking scene in a cafe on Eaton Road. It's raining outside. He hands a stranger his umbrella, not out of magnanimity but out of respect for the fact that the man has to go to work whereas he himself has time to sit and wait for the rain to stop.

 

This is an openly hagiographical work. There are scenes here of Shankly remembering each of his players in his prayers, almost as shocking to the modern reader as Leopold Bloom masturbating must have been to the reader of nearly a 100 years ago. Like most hagiographies, it's monumental. Team sheets, match reports, the full texts of interviews with Harold Wilson and Shelley Rohde, everything is in here. I didn't feel qualified to say whether it was all accurate so I went to visit my friend Peter Hooton – one of the founders of the Liverpool supporters' union the Spirit of Shankly – who said the only mistake he could find was that they keep leaving the "k" out of Kirkby. This level of detail, coupled with Peace's usual schtick of short, repetitive phrases can make the book a tough read. "In the ninth minute, Ian St John scored. In the 72nd minute, Roger Hunt scored. In the last minute, in the very last minute, St John scored again."

 

When it's good it sounds like Homer. When it's bad it sounds like an infinity of goal alerts. I know that when my dad reads it he will gorge himself on that exhaustive list of remembered goals but others will find it too much. The temptation to skip pages is enormous. I asked Peter, as a football fan, what he thought. He said: "I want to go out and knock on doors like a Jehovah's Witness and read this book to people." Which is surely the point. For a long time now literary fiction has concerned itself with telling it like it is – with power, corruption and lies – or telling it like it was – Tudors. This isn't a book about the way things were or the way things are. This is a book about the way things should be.

[Hermes]

Having read the extracts in today's Times I won't be buying. The worst writing style of any book I've ever read.

 

Lonely room and dinner for one — an Anfield legend’s awayday treat

Bill waited and Bill waited. Bill still went to the games, Bill still watched the matches. But Bill waited and Bill waited. Bill had stood on the Kop, Bill had sat in the stands. Waiting and waiting. Not with the directors, the directors and their friends. Not in their box. Bill waited and Bill waited. On the Kop, in the stands. Bill waited and Bill waited. For the letter on the mat. The invitation and the ticket. Bill waited and Bill waited. For the knock on the door or the voice on the phone. Asking Bill, inviting Bill. To an away game, an away match.

At Ayresome Park or White Hart Lane. But Bill waited and Bill waited. For just a letter or just a call. Until Bill gave up waiting. For the letter that never came. The invitation and the ticket. Bill stopped waiting. For the knock on the door and the voice on the phone. Until Bill said he gave up waiting. Still first to the post. Until Bill said he stopped waiting. Still first to the phone. Still waiting, still hoping.

Hoping for a letter. An invitation and a ticket. First to the post. Not saying, just hoping. Hoping for a call. And first to the phone – Hello, hello? This is Bill Shankly speaking . . .

Mr Shankly, said the voice on the line, this is Liverpool Football Club. We have a request for you to attend the second leg of the Uefa Cup Final. In Bruges next week. From – Oh well. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Of course, I’d be delighted to be there. Thank you. But I think it’s a bit late in the day. I mean, for the travel and for the hotel. A little bit late now . . .

No, no, said the voice on the line. Liverpool Football Club will make all the necessary travel arrangements.

Oh well, then. Then thank you. I would be delighted to come.

Great, said the voice on the line. Then we’ll send you all the tickets you need. Everything you need. To your house.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bill put down the telephone. Bill walked back into the kitchen.

And Ness looked at Bill. The look on his face. In his eyes – Who was that, asked Ness. What was that about, love?

It was the club, love. Someone from the club. I don’t know who, love. I didn’t recognise the voice . . .

What did they want, love?

To invite me to Bruges, love. To the second leg of the final next week. As part of the club, love. The official party.

Really, asked Ness. I wonder why, love? It’s taken them long enough, has it not? I wonder why now, love?

I don’t know, love.

Well, what did you say, love? You’re not going to go? After all this time, love. After waiting so long . . .

I know, love. I know. But I don’t want anybody to think I’m being petty, love. I mean, I don’t want anybody to say Bill Shankly is a petty man. A man who bears a grudge, love . . .

[Byrnie]

You wouldn't have bought it even if you thought it was well written, Herpes, you tight arse twat. Negged.

[Gnasher]

Just on channel 4 news.Interview with peace, clips of shanks. Catch it on channel4 +1. It's an hour behind. The book sounds fucking great.

[Gnasher]

On now channel 4+1

[ALL SAINTS]

Good review that I thought.

Is there any chance we can avoid a Dave Kirby piece on it?