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The Grass Arena: An Autobiography (1988)

by John Healy(Favorite Author)

4.02 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0141189592 (ISBN13: 9780141189598)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Penguin Books

review 1: This is a profoundly, powerfully sad book, written by an extraordinary man.It’s not clear how extraordinary John Healy is till the end of his autobiographical account, which ends presumably sometime before he chronicles his story. The only date that crops up in the book is 1960, when it seems Healy might be about 20 years old, then there is reference to his age of 28, when he’s many years into his alcoholic life. After the bulk of the book chronicles in its timeless fashion his episodic life as a wino, he suddenly enters a whole new realm of being, becoming a world class chess player. This period is also timelessly described, and it is only a small portion of the book. Healy then abruptly leaves chess and seeks something more, which for a while is a mix of hopeful l... moreove, yoga, and meditation. His quest and the story he recounts ends when issues of class, social unease, and futility find him seated on the ground in India, using the holy Book of the Guru Gita as a cushion, silent, suspended in indecision. The book’s final words are an ellipsis of more years gone by, chess forsaken and love forgotten. But to return to the extraordinary aspect of Healy. Even without having any sort of biographical framework for his life—his birth date, the duration of each of his phases of life—it is made clear that Healy somehow endured years of physical abuse as an alcoholic (from other winos, the police, and himself, several times ending in hospital), and yet somehow emerged from the grass arena with his body and mind largely intact. Despite the abuse to brain cells, Healy could play chess well, no easy feat, as it requires a steel-trap mind, an ability to visualize and hold in one’s head game scenarios many moves ahead. This part of Healy was not apparent in his descriptions of the random moments of consciousness, when thirst and drink were punctuated by violence and petty crime or during longer periods when sobriety was forced on him by stints in prison. In retrospect, however, it’s apparent that Healy’s mind was exceptional, that for all the bouts of black-out obliteration, the brains cells fastened tight to vivid and visceral detail that might easily fill the fabrications of a literary novel. His prose is simple and direct, and he avoids trite and clichéd expression, presenting a voice that is direct and unflinching, sometimes touched with a wistful wonder. The violence is blunt and accounted with little emotion, though he sometimes expresses sorrow that a that wino who has, for instance, lost an arm will not be able to long survive in the arena.Healy enters the arena in stages. His begins his story with accounts of a childhood marred by his father’s brutality. It’s almost literally the first thing we encounter in the book, a kick in the face. His mother, whom he loved, is not able to protect him nor is she able to display much affection, limited in her beliefs to an emotional austerity. His idylls in Ireland with aunts and uncles are the happiest moments in his life, and of these times Healy writes tenderly and almost sensuously and passionately of the people, events, and the play of weather on the landscape. In one extended scene Healy reveals himself ignorant and sensitive: he cannot bear his relatives taking a knife to the frisky bull calves who must be castrated, and he suffers extended ridicule and abuse for his vehement disapproval. But the visits to Ireland always end with a return to his council home in London. Innocently enough, he begins to drink, learns how the alcohol eases the tension and unease he feels throughout his body. He learns to box ably and is successful in several matches, but his drinking soon derails any chance at a career. Each of several short-term laboring jobs end after a weekend of binge drinking, and eventually he’s nicked for petty crimes and given a chance to join the army. Boxing attains for him some status and privilege, but drink, insubordination, and several desertions land him in deeper and deeper trouble. He flees to Ireland, but his several months there come to a close when his uncle can no longer afford to keep him after the season’s heavy work is done. Back in London, he more and more alienates himself from his family, eventually leaving to spare his Mum the shame of his bad black out behavior.After more than a decade in the arena and in one jail or another, Healy is introduced to chess. He knows that he is trading one addiction for another. But his rapid rise in the chess world, a reconciliation with his mum, and new-found social prospects keep him from anything more than a social drink of wine. There is no backsliding, but there is still no relief from the tensions and social unease that he’d felt as a youth. Coupled with these disabilities, Healy feels himself in the grip of unforgiving English classism, unable to satisfactorily present himself in even middle class settings without anxiety about his working class roots and criminal past. His love for the daughter of exiled nobility has him follow the “Countess” to India to a yogic Ashram. He desperately tries to communicate his affection to her, but she does not return his feelings.Some years later, in 1988, The Grass Arena is published. The book’s final words suggest the passing of another long period in his life, a period devoid of drink, chess, and love, significantly filled, perhaps, only with his efforts to write his story. There is no joy, however, and no triumph. As much as Healy has achieved, his story is a bitter one and his life seems now almost hollow. But it’s not bitterness that Healy himself expresses, and there is a remote diffidence—a silent despair—in his narrative’s conclusion. It is at this point that, one begins to understand how profound the absence of affection in his life has been. He has long sought, it seems, his mother’s arms—which she would not extend to him unless he were beaten and wounded first. Healy is at heart, it seems, a gentle soul, and he displays a general bonhomie and easy manner with all his mates, in and out of the arena, and there is a gentle, naïve, and almost sexless yearning in most all of his thoughts about women. The contrast, then, between what is sought and what is attained—despite the years slogging and years succeeding—is painful: while his escape from the physical, mental, and moral debasement of the arena should be occasion for celebration, there seems instead only to be a silence of benumbed emptiness, satisfaction cruelly withheld.[Fact checking Healy’s life after having read this book, I found that he was born in 1943, spent 15 years in the arena, and another 10 as a chess player, which means he spent up to four or five years writing this book.]
review 2: One of our bookclub reads.... I can understand why people recommend this book as its story is so relevant to many people around us and its amazing how he turns himself round through chess but I found reading this book was depressing maybe reading during the winter months wasn't a good idea, bleak days and long nights, but no tater how much I tried I just couldn't come to even like picking it up and struggled to finish it... In saying that I'm sure lots of people will enjoy it... less

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