Much Missed Mastery

Pour Me: A Life by A.A. Gill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


For years I have enjoyed A. A. Gill's journalism, especially his TV criticism which, much to the annoyance of my family, I often used to read out loud, so eager was I to share his genius with a wider audience. His mastery of the English language, the ability to pick exactly the right words in order to illuminate an original, often complex and invariably overlooked insight, remains unparalleled. I flick through the TV crit these days, missing him every time.

Given such admiration, I was of course interested when he published his memoirs a couple of years ago. I put off buying a copy, however, thinking I would get to it when I had more time. But time is a funny thing. You can run out of it. As happened to poor A. A. Gill himself, caught off guard aged just 62 by a cancer he called 'the full English' and which did for him in a matter of months.

So, on hearing of his untimely death, I went straight out and bought a copy of 'Pour Me: A Life'. I expected to like it. I just had no idea how much. It is not simply the writing itself that is so good - as succinct and striking as his journalism - but also the utter lack of self-pity with which he describes his addiction to alcohol, offering honest answers instead of easy ones as he tries to account for it. As a personality, A.A.Gill had a reputation for arrogance, but there is no sign of it here. Instead, he explains how every day after the near-death nadir he reached at the age of thirty, when he finally gave up drinking, felt like a blessing. His writing never ceases to entertain, but a humble gratitude at being alive shines through it; all the more poignantly given how close he was to the end.

The most astonishing aspect of A. A. Gill's achievements and skill as a writer is that he suffered all his life from the most acute form of dyslexia. I had no idea about this until I read 'Pour Me.' Written off as 'thick' in a brainy family, it meant that he had to work a thousand times harder to read, remember and be listened to, learning to store up every crumb of a fact that fell across his path in order to have an arsenal of information with which to defend and present himself to the world. Even at the height of his drunkenness, he says, he would have a radio on in every room so as to feed his brain with as many useful pieces of information as possible.

Late in life he was asked to return to his school to talk about dyslexia and how he had overcome it. He was terrified. But when he opened his mouth the most fluent celebration of the power and importance of the English language poured forth. Reading his rendering of it on the page brought tears to my eyes. I am tempted to quote the whole passage, (yes, I always find myself wanting to quote A. A. Gill - see above!), but will limit myself to an edited taster:

"English is the finest language ever coined, so exact and specific it can encompass a universe and split an atom. It is a thing of peerless beauty and elegance. It is heroic and mythic, has the strength to crack worlds and is as delicate and subtle as dew on a web. If you have English in your head you can already think things that people who don't have it don't even know they can't think. And no one can take it away from you."

Hear hear. I miss your words, A.A. Gill. Rest in peace.



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