BOOK OF THE WEEK
THE STORIES OF MY LIFE
by James Patterson (Century £20, 368 pages)
Anyone who’s ever started a James Patterson thriller knows how damn hard it is to put down. And the same goes for this lively, invigorating memoir.
Patterson is a billion-selling literary leviathan that pretty much sweeps away everything in its path; one of the best-selling and most lucrative authors in the world, with sales topping around $400 million and earning him a fortune of around $700 million along the way.
Arguably the world’s most prolific author, he has over 400 titles on his books, from thrillers to nonfiction on subjects from Jeffrey Epstein to the Kennedys to ER nurses, to true crime, children’s fiction and teenage fiction.
Star-studded: James Patterson and Dolly Parton. James’ refreshing autobiography features stories about A-list friends like the country star herself
This stimulating, immensely upbeat autobiography appears to be the tenth book he has published this year alone. Passionate about literacy, he and his wife Sue do tremendous things to promote reading, help children and schools, and build bookstores. And he’s 75. Doesn’t he ever take a break?
Well no. He knows everyone and is happy to let us know. Dropped names tumble through the pages like apples falling from a tree.
It’s a gossip columnist’s paradise: here’s The Doors’ Jim Morrison hanging upside down to test the lighting rig at a music venue where young Patterson works; Here’s Dolly Parton, a potential collaborator and reassuringly “sincere, thoughtful, smart as a whip, funny and self-deprecating”. She calls him “Jimmy James” and sings Happy Birthday into the phone.
Tom Cruise (“not that short and a total pleasure to talk to”) calls him in LA to meet and gives him his home number. Idris Elba (“very funny”) wants to talk about the role of Alex Cross, Patterson’s troubled detective hero, originally played by Morgan Freeman in the movie Along Came A Spider, Patterson’s first major novel to go nuclear. So does Jamie Foxx, who calls a teenage Paramount executive a “squirrel-like little f***er.”
James recalls Dolly calling him “Jimmy Jim” and singing Happy Birthday to him over the phone. He met at a music venue where he used to work
Meanwhile, Serena Williams wants his autograph after a flight from Florida.
On the sidewalks of New York, he and Woody Allen wave timidly at each other; Tennessee Williams is sitting at the next table in a Manhattan restaurant; and while he’s having a drink in a piano bar, who should walk in there but Joe Cocker for an impromptu two-hour jam session.
He’s chewing the fat with Kurt Vonnegut on the steps of the Slaughterhouse Five author’s home. At an agent’s house, he watches as Norman Mailer and James Baldwin — “two little fellas who looked about as athletic as French poodles” — try to argue back-to-back about what is and isn’t good literature.
There is never a dull moment. He loves his golf and has scored nine holes in one. Which seems a lot. He plays the game with Presidents Bush and Clinton, although Trump is the most natural golfer, he says, with a real low handicap.
He’s a pal to the Clintons, having worked with Bill on two massive best-selling doorstop thrillers, The President’s Daughter and The President Is Missing. (Find the topic there.) Not surprisingly, Hillary helps out with a very supportive quote on the cover of the memoir.
On the road to literary domination, Patterson had found time at 38 to become CEO of advertising giant J. Walter Thompson.
James (pictured) is a pal to the Clintons, having worked with Bill on two massive best-selling doorstop thrillers, The President’s Daughter and The President Is Missing
He was clearly a brilliant advertising executive and in-demand copywriter: he ran the accounts for Burger King, Miller Beer and Philip Morris. This was the Mad Men era, with expense reports, martinis, long days and very late nights, when female executives still had to wear hats in the office.
Patterson doesn’t mince his words: When British marketing conglomerate WPP bailed on a takeover attempt led by Martin Sorrell, it’s fair to say they didn’t get along. “I always thought Sir Martin was a… rather unpleasant, fire-breathing bean counter.”
Patterson was tirelessly industrious but had his eye on a different world outside of ad-land’s offices. He wanted to be a writer: “I got up at five every morning to set aside a few hours before I went to work in the advertising factory. I would write early in the morning every morning. At noon I locked my office door and wrote for half an hour. I would write on the plane during any business trip. I would write pages at four in the morning and I would write again until midnight.
“I refused to give up on myself.” So that’s how you do it: you have to work damn hard.’
They also have employees. No wonder he has released so many titles. Check out any shelf of Patterson books in your local store and you’ll see one thing: most of them are co-authors. And as Patterson knows, people can get terribly stuck-up about it.
THE STORIES OF MY LIFE by James Patterson (Century £20, 368 pages)
He deals with this criticism quite briskly. See he writes: “Simon & Garfunkel, Lennon & McCartney, Gilbert & Sullivan, Woodward & Bernstein, Rodgers & Hammerstein…” and so on. Collaborations are common and often work beautifully, he says. So true.
This is not a traditional autobiography. It is told in rapid-fire, hard-hitting little chapters, two or three pages at most, that make it virtually impossible to stop reading. The language is colloquial, friendly.
It’s plenty entertaining. And it’s full of stories, just like his novels. “One thing I’ve learned and embraced about writing a book, or even giving a good speech, is storytelling. Story after story after story.’
Patterson rattles through his early life, a happy childhood in upstate New York, where he was raised in Catholic schools, learned to play the piano from an elderly nun, loved sports and developed a passion for Elvis Presley, much to the displeasure of his mother, who was not so enthusiastic and had him confess to a priest that he owned Elvis trading cards. The priest replied, “Who doesn’t like Elvis Presley?” Quite.
In his twenties he made it to Woodstock, where he fell asleep in the mud, had an anonymous erotic encounter at a performance of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead that he fondly remembered, and got a job as a resident nurse at a Harvard-affiliated mental hospital. It was here, during the long nights when nothing much happened, that he developed his love of reading and his passion for books. All books, any books. And he started writing his own stories.
Of course, since this is Patterson, he had some A-list patients, including James Taylor (“gorgeous handsome”), who sang in the hospital cafe, and the great American poet Robert Lowell (“troubled, but bright and interesting”). who would give private readings to some patients and staff. Heck, Patterson remarks, not unreasonably, “I got paid to listen to James Taylor and Robert Lowell.”
It’s quite a life, Pattersons, and this bubbly, funny, often deeply moving memoir is a perfect way to understand the dizzying world of a best-selling author.
How does he do that? Well, he says, with a large binder full of unused story ideas and the fact that everything he writes is detailed.
Is it that simple? I doubt it, but I loved this book.