John Healy (1) (1930–1991)

This account of being an alcoholic and rough sleeper is told in a format similar to a diary, using an observational style that gives some distance to the events. This is useful with such awful events; John Healy tells of regular fights during drinking sessions between the rough sleepers, as well as routine abuse by the police and prison staff. He also tells of moments of kindness and care. However, it is difficult to really understand how anyone survives living on the streets in this way for over 10 years.
The book gives no indication of the years the events are happening in and is told in a disorientating way that helps you get in to the head of an alcoholic on the streets; events jump around and merge, there are periods of blacking out and not remembering anything.
Written as a recovering alcoholic, how many of the memories would resemble the memories of others who were part of them is difficult to know, but this is a very personal book and gives the reader what John Healy remembers of those years as a rough sleeper.
The book certainly helps you understood the mind-set of an alcoholic and life on the street and is an excellent and harrowing account.… (more)

Penguin Books uses a rather flaky definition of what makes a book a “Classic,” so, while generally speaking I would classify Penguin Books as a very reliable publisher, and would buy their books “unseen”, following their good judgment, I must say that, especially in recent years, I feel some books in the series of “Modern Classics” were misfits, and it seems commercial rather than literary motives lead to the re-publication of books in this series. The grass arena originally published in 1988 (!), (doesn’t that feel like yesterday?), fits that category.

It is the autobiography of John Healy, and describes a part of his life, particularly the time he lived on “the street in London,” which is what the title refers to. While the author of the Afterword correctly identifies such people, as he writes that few who live and work in Central London (..) have not encountered the inhabitants of The grass arena it is hard to imagine that he is truthful when he writes that had never considered, nor imagined the texture of their lives (…) the round of begging, drinking, sleeping, fighting.

An important omission, which leaves the reader wondering, is the time, when this life story took place. It is only through reconstruction, as the paper clipping from the Evening Standard is dated 5 April 1975 (included on page 250). That means that Healy’s ordeal should be situated as taking place during the 1960s and early 70s. That is a bit of relief, although the apparent lack of temporality makes that it can be imagined to be situated in the 1980s, as it would well fit Thatcherite Britain, or even today, as the effects of Neo-Liberalism financial policy gradually erodes the welfare state.

The story is not beautiful, and neither is the language used, so be ready for some stiff vernacular. Much of it reads like the autobiography of a modern-day Dickensian character, one of the lowlier ones, in his own words. The account is by all means shocking, the type of horror story that parents hold up to their children when they warn them that if they do not do their homework, they will slip and fall to the lowest strata of society; or actually, probably still worse.

It is the prerogative of the editor / writer of the afterword, to highlight and emphasis the literary qualities of the book, but it seems unfair to downplay its value as a sociological document. Alcohol and addiction are pointed out, while abject poverty is never mentioned as a possible cause for such terrible life circumstances. It is therefore best to let the book speak for itself.… (more)