Tragic Life Stories.........

[moomoo]

While I was whiling away half an hour inn WH Smiths today I noticed a whole section with the heading 'Tragic Life Stories'.

Is this a new phenomenon? I know I don't get out much but there were hundreds of books under this heading, all about awful childhoods and so on.

I flicked through a couple but they looked so depressing! It seemed as if everyone who had ever had a crap childhood had written a book about it.

Anyway, have you read any of these - what did you gain from it? Hardly light holiday reading after all............

 

[Balbi]

It's like those Torey Hayden books about abused kids and rehabilitating them. It's fucking grief porn

 

[oryx]

While I was whiling away half an hour inn WH Smiths today I noticed a whole section with the heading 'Tragic Life Stories'.

Another bookshop had the same type of book under another heading! I wish I could remember it.

I read Dave Peltzer's 'A Child Called It' a few years ago & that was enough.

I think the process goes like this:

- person X writes heart-rending autobiography of being shut in a cupboard for days on end, having to eat the dog's leftovers or whatever

- siblings contest it and say person X is making it all up

- huge expensive lawsuit

 

[Geri]

I read some of these books that my mum & sister pass on to me (Child Called It, another one about an anorexic girl and I can't remember what the others were called). I find them interesting.

 

[Sweaty Betty]

This is all my mum absorbs- its her way of telling herself her life aint so shit, plus she likes to ive in the past....

 

[Geri]

I also read books about serial killers though, so maybe I am just sick in the head.

 

[trashpony]

I did a thread about this once in the days before they had their own section but were just cluttering up the top 20. I don't get these books. I still don't get them after that thread. I think it's something to do with the triumph of human spirit over adversity but I think they're a bit creepy. I read Sybil when I was a teenager and I had a sort of horrid fascination with detail of her suffering and I can still remember it. I'm not sure it's good for you to read that stuff.

 

[Tank Girl]

we had a giggle about these sorts of books in smiths at the airport - what lovely holiday reading they must make.

we also reckoned we'd know who on here would love them

 

[moomoo]

.

 

[Santino]

Another bookshop had the same type of book under another heading! I wish I could remember it.

Sometimes there's a section called 'Real Lives'.

 

[mrsfran]

AKA "Misery Porn". My mum likes them.

 

[felixthecat]

I read Sybil years ago and that was enough .

Everyone and his friend nowadays seems to have had a bloody awful abusive childhood. I see those book covers with the wistful soft focus child on the front and move away immediately to something more cheery - something about serial killers or forensic pathologists and their rotting corpses perhaps

 

[matrix_22]

to be honest i don't really believe them - i think a child called it was one of the first and since then it's like they need to be ever more lurid to try and outsell the previous one.

 

[Vintage Paw]

When people buy them at work, they try to tell you why they're so good.

"But don't you understand? They were raped. 16 times before the age of 2. Don't you understand?"

I know shit stuff happens, I don't want to get my rocks off reading about it. If I want tragedy that moves me I'd rather read it in astounding fiction.

 

[kyser_soze]

Ah, from the long line stretching back at least to 'Our Tune', via the misery mags (My Husband Decapitated Me With an Axe - this week's 'Closer' exclusive) and now misery porn.

Of course, none of those currently on sale will do anything like the trade that 'Fritzl was My Dad' is going to do...

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I think misery memoirs have always been popular. They just tended to be fiction and in the third person. Thomas Hardy springs to mind.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I think misery memoirs have always been popular. They just tended to be fiction and in the third person. Thomas Hardy springs to mind.

Indeed. But they had merit.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

There were plenty that didn't have merit, but they've dropped into obscurity. I think things like this are read because they make people count their blessings, perhaps.

 

[trashpony]

I think misery memoirs have always been popular. They just tended to be fiction and in the third person. Thomas Hardy springs to mind.

I've never understood the appeal, whether they're fictional or 'real life'. Jude the Obscure has got to be the most depressing book I've ever read

 

[kyser_soze]

Marxists would argue that it's another form of control - look at how bad things could be, look at the clear path of foolish behaviours the protagonists engaged in.

Personally I think it comes down to narratives featuring misery and struggle are simply more engaging.

 

[qoidjgf]

i don't read them.
i don't even watch them in movies.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

I am not that interested in reading biography anyway - I just prefer fiction - so would be unlikely to pick up one if those books but from what I have redd in reviews and talking to people who do enjoy that genre they seem to appeal to the "There but for the grace of God" in some readers.

Maybe I just like my tragedy once removed i.e. distilled through the thoughts of a novelist, ecreenwriter or poet

 

[rosa]

It's like those Torey Hayden books about abused kids and rehabilitating them. It's fucking grief porn

'Grief porn' - nail,head,thwack. It can't be healthy that the bestseller charts are so full of titles like 'Daddy-no!','Touched-but not by an angel' (with thanks to Dara O'Briain for that description) that they now have their own genre. Last time i was in WHSmith's the latest one was being advertised as 'the most harrowing tale of abuse every told'. Oh so it's a fucking competition now is it? No-one saying you should sweep child abuse under the carpet and not talk about it but there's something really horrible and gratuitous about this trend for 'my tragic tale's more harrowing than your tragic tale'.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Jude the Obscure has got to be the most depressing book I've ever read

Isn't it?
[useless fact alert] Hardy was obsessed with hanging because as a young child he had a telescope and could observe the executions in the yard of Dorchester Gaol from his bedroom. [/useless fact alert]

 

[poster342002]

A lot of these books provide a means of the survivor getting their story out - having been ignored and disbelieved for years.

A lot of shit goes on that people would rather pretend doesn't exist because it's so awful - hence these books make people feel uncomfortable and sneer at them as a defence mechanism.

Survivors of abuse are still roughly at the point that domestic violence victims were in the 1950s - basically people would rather they just shut up, kept it to themselves and not "spoil things" by forcing the world to acknoweldge what happens behind familial closed doors.

 

[Ranbay]

just walked out of WHSmiths... trying to get a book for a holiday and in between every other one is "daddy please no " " sold for ten fags " " fucked up the bum when i was 5 " " daddys little girl " " mummyY wont by me a XBOX360 " etc....

Cunts

 

[DotCommunist]

'ware the book with an imitation handwritten title and a pastel shaded cover.

 

[kyser_soze]

A lot of these books provide a means of the survivor getting their story out - having been ignored and disbelieved for years.

A lot of shit goes on that people would rather pretend doesn't exist because it's so awful - hence these books make people feel uncomfortable and sneer at them as a defence mechanism.

Survivors of abuse are still roughly at the point that domestic violence victims were in the 1950s - basically people would rather they just shut up, kept it to themselves and not "spoil things" by forcing the world to acknoweldge what happens behind familial closed doors.

What an utter load of bollocks. Even for you, this is exceptional.

 

[aylee]

While I was whiling away half an hour inn WH Smiths today I noticed a whole section with the heading 'Tragic Life Stories'.

Is this a new phenomenon? I know I don't get out much but there were hundreds of books under this heading, all about awful childhoods and so on.

I flicked through a couple but they looked so depressing! It seemed as if everyone who had ever had a crap childhood had written a book about it.

Anyway, have you read any of these - what did you gain from it? Hardly light holiday reading after all............

I've noticed this as well. I can't imagine why anyone would buy these books .... we all know that some kids suffer terribly from abuse, but to have so many of these books makes me worried that some people actually enjoy reading about it.

 

[kyser_soze]

People read these books for the same reason they read Heat, Closer; watch Jeremy Kyle and Oprah; lap up tales of celebrity rehab. Of course people enjoy reading about it - the narrative of personal journey through strife, overcoming great hardship, the life of the blameless victim...I doubt in the current climate you'd ever see an explosion in anthologies of rape stories, altho perhaps someone from a recent war-ravaged country who had been the victim of repeated gang rapes might sell some copies because it's so far away...

Come on people, think! - since Oprah pioneered the whole public confessional format this stuff has been fodder for the masses, only it's moved from celebrity's to common fowk, in the same trajectory as celebrity itself. It's no longer necessary to be in the public eye and having suffered as a child, having suffered full stop is now enough.