Читать книгу Michael Morpurgo: War Child to War Horse - Maggie Fergusson, Maggie Fergusson - Страница 5

For me the telling of stories has been my way of communicating with everyone around me. Each of us sees the world differently from anyone else, has our own perspective on who we are, who we have been, and what kind of a world it is that we find ourselves living in. We have our own views on what influences, which individuals, what happenings, have made us who we are.

Most writers use memory, to a greater or lesser extent, as a stimulus for their stories or poems, but I think I probably have relied on it more than most. Maybe it’s because I have a less fertile imagination, and have always needed that bedrock of memory on which to construct my stories. But memory is not that reliable, is always biased – after all memory is simply your own life remembered from your own point of view – and not necessarily then a reliable source, if truth be told! That doesn’t matter of course if you’re writing fiction, but, when trying to discover the truth about yourself, it’s important not to confuse it with fiction.

All my writing life I have confused the two, which is why I knew I would find it almost impossible to tell my own story without straying into fiction, either unintentionally or intentionally. So, when it was suggested I write my own memoir, I knew I couldn’t and probably shouldn’t do it. I knew I would have to find someone who could tell the story of that life objectively, critically and with integrity. I had read Maggie Fergusson’s biography of the Scottish poet George Mackay Brown, and found it compelling and deeply moving. So I asked her if she might like to write my life story, and do it her way, the story of a story maker. And that is what she has done wonderfully well. I learnt much about life from this book, long forgotten memories, distorted memories. It is like looking into a mirror – not that comfortable an experience, particularly as you get older. The mistakes and the fault lines are there in every wrinkle, but so is the living.

We wanted it, though, not to be simply a straight biography, but to weave into it fictional stories that reflect my life as it was lived. Shakespeare it was who suggested we have ‘seven ages’ in our lives. So tell the biography in seven chapters, we thought, alongside a story inspired by each ‘age’ of my life. It seemed to us that the fact might illuminate the fiction and vice versa, a fusion from which both might benefit.

Michael Morpurgo

Devon, 2013