The books interview: The author and critic on his memoir of his father, mawkishly coming out to his mother and being a dad
It was many years after the publication of his first book, Lantern Lecture, that Adam Mars-Jones realised it was “almost entirely made up of insults to father figures”. And not just father figures. Alongside novella-length stories about the Queen contracting rabies and the last squire of a north Wales estate was a version of the 1976 Black Panther murder trial. Mars-Jones had wanted to show how the court and the judge “had missed the point”. The judge in this case being his actual father, Sir William Mars-Jones.
Nearly 35 years later Mars-Jones is, apparently, more straightforwardly writing about his father again, this time in a memoir, Kid Gloves, published next week. “He was a big believer in respectful piety and not digging too deep,” he explains. “He liked surfaces and the formal mask and so probably wouldn’t have liked it that this book is not formal or distant. But while he’d be mortified by some things, I also think he’d have been pleased by others.”
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Nearly 35 years later Mars-Jones is, apparently, more straightforwardly writing about his father again, this time in a memoir, Kid Gloves, published next week. “He was a big believer in respectful piety and not digging too deep,” he explains. “He liked surfaces and the formal mask and so probably wouldn’t have liked it that this book is not formal or distant. But while he’d be mortified by some things, I also think he’d have been pleased by others.”
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