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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #37
Granta 37: The Family: They Fuck You Up
A collection of essays on the subject of the family, by Mikal Gilmore,(Gary Gilmore's brother who has written compelling story - "Shot in the Heart", about the dysfunctional family which resulted in this tragic end), William Wharton, Mona Simpson, Geoffrey Biddle, Seamus Deane, Giorgio Pressburger, Marketa Luskacova, Geoffrey Wolff, Harold Pinter and Tracy Kidder.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
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About the author
Mikal Gilmore
16 books72 followersMikal Gilmore was born "Michael Gilmore," but later changed the spelling of his name. He was born February 9, 1951 to Frank and Bessie Gilmore.
In 1977, Gilmore's brother Gary, a convicted murderer, was the first person executed after the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Gary Gilmore was executed for shooting two young Mormons, Max Jensen and Ben Bushnell, in cold blood. He was executed by firing squad in Utah. Mikal Gilmore's 1995 memoir, Shot in the Heart , details his relationship with Gary and their often troubled family, starting with the original Mormon settlers and continuing through to Gary's execution and its aftermath. Shot in the Heart received positive reviews, including a USA Today comment that states the book is "one of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." Gilmore's book won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Gilmore was long interested in music, and in the early 1970s began writing articles for Rolling Stone. In 1999, Gilmore's chronology Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock and Roll was published by Anchor. In July 2009 Gilmore released another book, Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and its Discontents . It was published by Free Press.
In 1977, Gilmore's brother Gary, a convicted murderer, was the first person executed after the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Gary Gilmore was executed for shooting two young Mormons, Max Jensen and Ben Bushnell, in cold blood. He was executed by firing squad in Utah. Mikal Gilmore's 1995 memoir, Shot in the Heart , details his relationship with Gary and their often troubled family, starting with the original Mormon settlers and continuing through to Gary's execution and its aftermath. Shot in the Heart received positive reviews, including a USA Today comment that states the book is "one of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." Gilmore's book won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Gilmore was long interested in music, and in the early 1970s began writing articles for Rolling Stone. In 1999, Gilmore's chronology Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock and Roll was published by Anchor. In July 2009 Gilmore released another book, Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and its Discontents . It was published by Free Press.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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April 10, 2022I borrowed this issue of Granta from a friend after I developed an interest in the itv series The Durrells and started reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. I loved the series and the Durrell family but kept having this sense that something is not quite right, esp. in the relationship between Mother and her eldest son, Lawrence. The relationship between the two seems to be verging almost on the incestuous. Louisa and Lawrence seem to me to behave to each other more like a couple than mother and son. In addition, Lawrence's first wife who lived with them in Corfu, is completely written out of Gerald's story as well as the tv series - I had to check Lawrence Durrell's biography to find that when the family was in Corfu, Lawrence had a wife who lived with them. If you'd just watched the series, you'd have assumed that Lawrence was single at the time.
My research into the Durrell family led me to Sappho Durrell, Lawrence's daughter from his second wife, who had a short and tragic life committing suicide at the age of 34. The Granta issue includes her journals and letters to her father Lawrence which she had entrusted to a friend with the request that they be published after her own and her father's death.
The man depicted in these journals comes across as insecure and demanding. He sends his daughter newspaper cuttings of favourable reviews he has received and makes her aware of sexual affairs he has with young women her age. He signs a letter to her as"lover". This really set alarm bells ringing: a mistake or a Freudian slip? Sappho has a love/hate relationship with her father as we can see from her letters (which are full of warmth) and the juxtaposition with her journals where she says at one point that she wants to kill him. She feels threatened by his sexuaility and disgusted by the twin role daughter/wife he has prepared for her. One feels particularly pained by her suicide because Sappho Durrell can write; this much is pretty obvious in the selection of her journal writings although some of the psychoanalytic stuff is a bit disorganised.
Lawrence Durrell"s misogynistic attitide was evident in all his relationships with women (with the possible exception of his mother). He publicly humiliated Nancy although he was torn to pieces when she left him. This is a pattern he repeated with other women too. It's a shame that the shadowy aspect of this otherwise likeable family had to play itself out in such a hard way on Sappho. I guess it's the more sensitive and perceptive ones that are the most vulnerable.
My research into the Durrell family led me to Sappho Durrell, Lawrence's daughter from his second wife, who had a short and tragic life committing suicide at the age of 34. The Granta issue includes her journals and letters to her father Lawrence which she had entrusted to a friend with the request that they be published after her own and her father's death.
The man depicted in these journals comes across as insecure and demanding. He sends his daughter newspaper cuttings of favourable reviews he has received and makes her aware of sexual affairs he has with young women her age. He signs a letter to her as"lover". This really set alarm bells ringing: a mistake or a Freudian slip? Sappho has a love/hate relationship with her father as we can see from her letters (which are full of warmth) and the juxtaposition with her journals where she says at one point that she wants to kill him. She feels threatened by his sexuaility and disgusted by the twin role daughter/wife he has prepared for her. One feels particularly pained by her suicide because Sappho Durrell can write; this much is pretty obvious in the selection of her journal writings although some of the psychoanalytic stuff is a bit disorganised.
Lawrence Durrell"s misogynistic attitide was evident in all his relationships with women (with the possible exception of his mother). He publicly humiliated Nancy although he was torn to pieces when she left him. This is a pattern he repeated with other women too. It's a shame that the shadowy aspect of this otherwise likeable family had to play itself out in such a hard way on Sappho. I guess it's the more sensitive and perceptive ones that are the most vulnerable.
March 15, 2018
I only read the Sappho Durrell section properly, while dipping into other stories. Will revisit it at another time, I'm sure. But her writing confirmed some of my suspicions on Durrell, I have to say...
November 27, 2021
My aunt gave me this Granta as a joke (be sure to look at the cover for the full title) after a very enjoyable conversation on extended family dynamics. The issue was...less enjoyable just because the first two pieces are difficult to read because of how acutely they hew to the subtitle. Mikal Gilmore's essay about his brother who died by firing squad and Sappho Durrell's diaries (she later died by suicide; I'm not sure I want to revisit her dad's Alexandria Quartet now) were two very different but very adept portrayals of intense psychological pain. Oh! Plus later a story of a family of four that dies by roadside fire. Yeesh. There are some great photography series in other parts, and a story by Gregory Wolff (older brother of Tobias) is a palate cleanser at the end, but overall, this felt really uninterruptedly heavy to read. Not bad; just consider yourself forewarned should you ever come across it.
January 7, 2025
I found this issue as compelling and engaging as I always find Granta, except for the dull second-to-last entry which I found immensely dull, in which the author goes on a middle-class sailing trip and thinks his son is a nice fellow whom he can trust with adulthood. Maybe I'd been too riled up and desensitized by the previous entries and their topics - murder, incest, the worst humanity has to offer - but I was exuberant when the penultimate story was done.
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May 19, 2009The full title of this volume is "The Family: they Fuck You Up" but fo some reason the good folks at Goodreads couldn't bring themselves to commit that to writing. This volume includes contributions by Sappho Durrell (daughter of the brilliant writer Lawrence Durrell and Eve Cohen), Mikal Gilmore (younger brother to the infamous Gary Gilmore who coined the phrase "Just Do It" while facing a firing squad in Utah (or was that Nike?), Geoffrey wolff (the lesser known but older brother of Tobias Wolff and author of the BRILLANT memoir "The Duke of Deception" about his some time father - his younger brother Tobias wrote his better known tale of his upbringing with his mother in "This Boy's Life" but I digress...
Sappho Durrell is not exactly a household name but if you know anyting aobut the name Durrell it's problably that her father is the author of "The Alexandria Quartet" comprised of Justine, Balthazar, Clea, Mountolive & Clea" and that her uncle Gerald is the autodidact naturalist who wrote some beautiful books about his idyllic and slightly crazy upbringing on the island of Corfu before WWII ("My Family And Other Animals", "Birds Beasts and Other Relatives")and in later life became a world renowned zoologist and contributed a multitude of great books on his collecting safaris in Africa. Durrell established one of the best known breeding zoos for endangered animals located on the Isle of Jersey off the coast of France.
The piece in Granta by Sappho Durrell includes bits form her ournals and exchanges with her manipulative, manaical father - she maintains that he raped her aas a child and naturally she was forever damaged from this incident which he never acknowledged as far as I know. Durrell's biographer admits that he was an impetuous, womanizer all his life discredits the rape accusation. Sappho portrays him as a manipulative beast of a father who essentially used her as a model for the characters in his novels (Sappho's mother Eve Cohen was widely thought to be the the mysterious jew Justine in the first book of the quartet) which if you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do - it's less expensive than opium and just as effective.
Sappho Durrell is not exactly a household name but if you know anyting aobut the name Durrell it's problably that her father is the author of "The Alexandria Quartet" comprised of Justine, Balthazar, Clea, Mountolive & Clea" and that her uncle Gerald is the autodidact naturalist who wrote some beautiful books about his idyllic and slightly crazy upbringing on the island of Corfu before WWII ("My Family And Other Animals", "Birds Beasts and Other Relatives")and in later life became a world renowned zoologist and contributed a multitude of great books on his collecting safaris in Africa. Durrell established one of the best known breeding zoos for endangered animals located on the Isle of Jersey off the coast of France.
The piece in Granta by Sappho Durrell includes bits form her ournals and exchanges with her manipulative, manaical father - she maintains that he raped her aas a child and naturally she was forever damaged from this incident which he never acknowledged as far as I know. Durrell's biographer admits that he was an impetuous, womanizer all his life discredits the rape accusation. Sappho portrays him as a manipulative beast of a father who essentially used her as a model for the characters in his novels (Sappho's mother Eve Cohen was widely thought to be the the mysterious jew Justine in the first book of the quartet) which if you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do - it's less expensive than opium and just as effective.
July 10, 2009
The first three stories in this are tough to read: A remembrance of Gary Gilmore by his brother, which also works as a harsh recounting of Portland before its heyday; the diary entries of Lawrence Durrell's daughter, Sappho, who later committed suicide; and a very disturbing account of an entire family lost to field burning. Three stars because of a very shallow "memoirs of a backpacker" style piece on Egypt.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews