Touching From A Distance
Revered by his peers and idolised by his fans, Ian Curtis left behind a legacy rich in artistic genius. But although mesmerising on stage, in his private life he was introverted and had desperate mood swings. In Touching from a Distance his widow pieces together why - despite his impending international fame and young family - Curtis took his own life on 18 May 1980. Regar...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
October 4th 2007
by Faber and Faber
(first published 1995)
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Spencer
rated it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Fans of Manchester Post-Punk, and that's about it.
This is an mildly interesting read, though it's probably only of interest to fans of Joy Division, Factory and the late 70's Manchester Post-Punk scene. Deborah Curtis's writing could definitely use more life, but as far as a document of events it functions ably. Some people will probably even find the mannered English delivery a nice respite from what's usually found in rock bios, and I appreciated the effort she seemed to put into being objective. Of course, it makes for a great companion pie...more
A "tell-all" of everybody's favorite suicide...Ian Curtis. You like Manchester, you like New Order, a fan of Joy Division, want to know more about the man, the myth, the deceased frontman....then read this. If you don't then, don't read this...duh, what did you think I was going to say. Beg you to read this? Whatever you probably LOVE Interpol and think they are so original...without Joy Divsion you wouldn't have any of that stuff. Original PERIOD. Me lady is a big fan of Joy Div...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This is a wonderful peek into the Iconic Ian Curtis' private life; however I suggest that you keep in mind who is telling the story. My suggestion would be to read “The Life of Ian Curtis – Torn Apart” by Mick Middles and Lindsay Reade either while reading this book or directly after reading it. This may help to buffer some of the incriminations Deborah Curtis brings forward against her long deceased husband. My problem with Deborah Curtis and this book is that she is generous with details on ac...more
Biographies written by people close to the subject are a double edged sword. Sure, they saw it all. They were there from the beginning. Then again, it's pretty hard to be a neutral source of information when you're so involved in the story. Given the fact that Ian Curtis decided to kill himself rather than break up with his mistress, deal with his marriage, or raise his daughter, I thought it would be best to take what Deborah Curtis had to say with a huge grain of salt.
All in al...more
All in al...more
Reading a biography of Ian Curtis may seem a strange choice considering I was never a fan of Joy Division, it was a couple of years before I fully appreciated the Manchester music scene and since then I have been a fan of ‘The Stone Roses’.
I read ‘Touching from a distance’ to find out more about Ian Curtis, an icon for different reasons, mainly his untimely death by suicide at the age of 23, for me the main tragedy was not only the loss of someone so young but the people he left beh...more
I read ‘Touching from a distance’ to find out more about Ian Curtis, an icon for different reasons, mainly his untimely death by suicide at the age of 23, for me the main tragedy was not only the loss of someone so young but the people he left beh...more
An excellent read, and a must-find for any Joy Division fan. Sadly, it reads more like a chronicle of missing the signs about Ian Curtis' depression than anything else. Yes, there are a number of great insights, and it provides a first-person description of some of the more storied events in the development of the Manchester scene at the time. Yes, it gets into all the nitty-gritty of Curtis' affair with Annik Honore and what that did to his already delicate psyche. However, when reading this, I...more
At times the writing can be read like Deborah is trying to fit everything she can into one page. It's a good read written be someone that was actually more well-connected to the band. I picked up the book after seeing 'Control' It was a little more friendlier in the attempt at showing the portrait of a troubled soul. In this Ian comes off as a complete tw@t. I don't know if it was my feminism that kicked in at some parts or the intolerability I have of possessive men, but I had to distance mysel...more
Even though the actor as Ian Curtis was incredible in CONTROL, I was disappointed by the movie. I'm getting more information than I ever needed to know now, but I am getting sucked into that late-seventies Manchester world more than even a complex biopic can do. Thoughts so far: Curtis is as controlling as he is uncontrollable. I think his widow is very brave for having written this book.
P.S. I do love the movie 24-hour Party People, though!
P.S. I do love the movie 24-hour Party People, though!
This was never going to be laugh a minute stuff. I'm assuming that anyone remotely interested in Ian Curtis knows the ultimate outcome, so it's not a spoiler to say that a book about someone who commited suicide was never going to be light reading.
The book starts with mentions of his teenage years, with little or no reference to his early childhood.
I found it a fascinating story about young love, a man trying to make everyone happy and failing, badly at times.
...more
The book starts with mentions of his teenage years, with little or no reference to his early childhood.
I found it a fascinating story about young love, a man trying to make everyone happy and failing, badly at times.
...more
Sometime around 4/1/11--I just started the book. Ian was a bit of a scamp as a kid who liked to get off on any chemical he could get his hands on. He and his chums got involved in some social services scheme in Macclesfield where they'd visit the elderly. While one entertained their aging charge, the other would rummage through the medicine cabinet. In one instance, the drug they found was stronger than anything Ian and his friend Tony had ever tried before. They both wound up in the hospital, g...more
I think you can skip the book and just read this article from The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/apr...
The article is more eloquent, more poignant and shorter. I liked this bit:
"I saw a review on Amazon once, somebody had written, 'She doesn't understand her subject'. And I thought, 'Well, surely that's the point?'" She sighs.
This middle section of "Touching from a Distance" dragged for me. Lots of arguing about carrying amps ...more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/apr...
The article is more eloquent, more poignant and shorter. I liked this bit:
"I saw a review on Amazon once, somebody had written, 'She doesn't understand her subject'. And I thought, 'Well, surely that's the point?'" She sighs.
This middle section of "Touching from a Distance" dragged for me. Lots of arguing about carrying amps ...more
When I first heard of Ian Curtis, I was only 18 years old and almost inmediately fell in love with his songs; at that time I was a dark creature and the story I heard back then was that he committed suicide when he was very young because his girlfriend walked away. It was really romantic for me. Some years latter I found myself enjoying the music of New Order so much more than Joy Division, and the whole story of Ian Curtis became almost a cliché. Years passed and suddenly there was all this buz...more
Deborah Curtis presents a brief biography of the man- or maybe the boy- she married and gives the reader a glimpse at the very human side of her husband Ian Curtis. Deborah presents the good and the bad and some may not want to think of an idol like Ian Curtis behaving the way he did. This is a frustrating and sad story--like many that deal with suicide. There aren’t really any answers to why here and I didn’t expect them. One does get a sense that Ian’s epilepsy and numerous prescriptions m...more
Although I've been a fan of Joy Division/New Order since the late 80s, this is the first time I felt compelled to learn anything about them. This is not just Ian's story, it's a story about a codependant relationship. I went into this book wary that there may be some level of subjectivism since it is written by his wife but I was pleased to find that Deborah Curtis was honest, not just about Ian but about her faults and flaws, as well. Of course, people rarely show all sides of themselves to ...more
The author, Curtis's wife, comes across very convincing in her honesty about her husband and marriage. She doesn't romanticize him, but nor does she seem to have any axes to grind. I have no doubt there are Ian Curtis devotees who've slammed her for her unsentimental treatment, but it seems only fair. He was a very young guy who took on too many adult responsibilities and, this, along with health problems and career confusion, caused him to despair.
The book is a bit amateurishly w...more
The book is a bit amateurishly w...more
“The basic storyline is a very old one – boy meet girl, boy gets to travel, boy meets another girl… I tried to make the book factual without colouring it with my own personal opinion… I wrote it mainly to help myself put the events into some kind of order…” – Deborah Curtis (Author of Touching from a Distance)
Deborah Curtis is the widow to Joy Divison’s Ian Curtis. Her book, Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division, was the jumping off point for the film about Ian Curti...more
Deborah Curtis is the widow to Joy Divison’s Ian Curtis. Her book, Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division, was the jumping off point for the film about Ian Curti...more
I couldn't help but mourn all the information that Deborah seemed to leave out - lyric analysis, the recording process and a more detailed description of JD's climb up the fame ladder. Even their decaying relationship makes it difficult for her to give a personal account of what was going on in his head towards the end. She seems very confused in several parts of the book, which is only understandable since she was barely included in the band's inner workings as they got bigger.
Despite th...more
Despite th...more
Una biografia del tutto divergente dalle glorificazioni e mitizzazioni delle icone musicali a cui di solito siamo sottoposti. Un resoconto sofferto e personalissimo in cui Deborah Curtis racconta gli anni vissuti con Ian, per la maggior parte trascorsi a gestire la sua personalità ossessiva e l'insostenibile lotta contro depressione ed epilessia. Tra le righe (ma a volte anche no) si legge molta amarezza e persino rabbia.
Un libro bellissimo, consigliabile anche a chi non è fan dei Joy Division,...more
Un libro bellissimo, consigliabile anche a chi non è fan dei Joy Division,...more
It was a very good book - though it feels weird saying that, because it was so utterly sad. I mean, I suppose you know what you're getting with a book like this - you already now the ending, right? But it's even harder to read when you've read the build up. I'm astounded no one picked up on how OCD he sounded. I think Peter Hook's quote, about how if he'd been born 10 years later the doctors would know what to do for him, was the saddest moment in the whole book. It's very strange, though, ...more
And this is why Goodreads needs to allow for half-star ratings. Touching from a Distance is a solid 3 1/2-star book, but since I can't give it that rating, I'm sticking with the three stars, because it's not good enough to warrant four stars. Deborah Curtis does a wonderful job of demonstrating how exclusive the homosocial world of indie rock can be. The book just really isn't about Joy Division. Whatever commentary she supplies about their music is really basic and marginal, which makes sin...more
maybe even really liked it, just because it shed some light on Ian Curtis life - and my experience of seeing them play live once upon a time in London, opening for John Cooper Clarke. Joy Division had already started playing when we arrived, but their presence could be felt from the entrance of the building where we could just begin to hear the music, to the door of the auditorium was intense.
there was something completely compelling about them, and Ian Curtis especially, my spirit just ru...more
there was something completely compelling about them, and Ian Curtis especially, my spirit just ru...more
Deborah Curtis' biography of Ian Curtis and their life together (and apart), tangled in the angst of their adolescence and later the burgeoning success of Joy Division is depressingly mundane. There is little of the joy that pervades other rock 'n' roll recollections, probably because this is written from the viewpoint of an outsider, both to Ian's internal torment and to the increasingly closed clique that the band (and its entourage) became. Not so much a warning against the lures of fame and ...more
I'm a fan of Joy Division and I love the whole mystique around the band, given that Curtis died 6 years before I was born, but this is a good read for anyone who is interested in human relationships. Written by his estranged, abandoned wife after his death, Touching From A Distance highlights the struggles of trying to love someone deeply disturbed and being constantly seduced by the music industry.
Deborah Curtis does a phenomenal job of balancing the emotional with fact, and tellin...more
Deborah Curtis does a phenomenal job of balancing the emotional with fact, and tellin...more
Jason Walker
added it
I do not approach this as other have: this is not a joke. Joy Division and Ian Curtis were ready to take the American air waves by storm a full three years before Billy Idol and Adam Ant. Is this historically important and ready for review? The answer is simply it is as important as the people that lived.
The death of Ian Curtis was preventable under today's standards: he would have been in for observation, but that wasn't the scene. I held my left arm against my body for more than s...more
The death of Ian Curtis was preventable under today's standards: he would have been in for observation, but that wasn't the scene. I held my left arm against my body for more than s...more
The backmatter alone (complete releases, live shows, lyrics, unreleased lyrics, etc.) make this pretty valuable for Joy Division superfans; Curtis' admittedly biased, or to be more fair personal take on the story and lengthy relationship with her husband would be queasily fascinating without it. That Ian Curtis could be a dick shouldn't surprise anyone or effect the music at all, but if you care about the band, this book is valuable context, powerfully (and justly) unromantic in its depiction of...more
“I stared at him, he was so still. Then the rope - I hadn’t noticed the rope. The rope from the clothes rack was around his neck. I ran through to the sitting room and picked up the telephone. No, supposing I was wrong—another false alarm. I ran back to the kitchen and looked at his face –a long string of saliva hung from his mouth. Yes, he really had done it. What to do next? I looked around the room expecting to see Ian standing in a corner watching my reaction. My instinct that he was playing...more
"Touching from a Distance" is indeed a touching book, as well as a relentless examination of rock mythology and its relation to the real lives that surround the enchanted world of rock stars. An although these days apps and hi-tech have replaced guitars and world tours in pop culture's imagery and self-mythology, Deborah Curtis account of Ian Curtis meteoric and truncated rise towards rock stardom in the late 70s remains a revealing account, from the point of view of the "mundane"...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Andrea
rated it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of Joy Division, music, Manchester
I was kind of disappointed after reading this book. And I guess that was good. It was my final step on the road to more independence and maturity.
After being a real fanatic about Joy Division in the 80ies I let that part of my life sleep for another decade. It popped up time and again, but was no longer having the impact it back then had on me.
Reading this book closed the final chapter of this story.
Being Ian Curtis was even more sad than I imagined it to be, but also...more
After being a real fanatic about Joy Division in the 80ies I let that part of my life sleep for another decade. It popped up time and again, but was no longer having the impact it back then had on me.
Reading this book closed the final chapter of this story.
Being Ian Curtis was even more sad than I imagined it to be, but also...more
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