Review
James Patterson invented a magic bestseller formula – so why is his own life story so… putdownable?
The Stories of My Life starts off like a thriller but devolves into non-anecdotes about famous friends like Tom Cruise and Donald Trump
James Patterson’s moreish, easy-on-the-brain thrillers have made him the world’s bestselling author, a favourite even of normally reluctant readers. His new autobiography deploys his customary simple, declarative sentences and very short chapters – a narrative method so seductive that I found myself resenting the mental effort demanded on the very rare occasions when a chapter stretched to four pages. And yet, for all the addictive qualities of his style, his fans may find that this is the first Patterson book they’re able to put down before they’ve finished.
It starts very well, with Patterson, now 75, rattling through a vivid evocation of the Massachusetts mental hospital he worked in for five years from the age of 18, where he first discovered the joy of reading – he needed something to fill the hours when he was on the suicide-watch shift.
He then spools back to his childhood, which also proves a rich seam for eccentric behaviour: the devout Catholic mother who sent him to confession for collecting Elvis Presley bubblegum cards (“Who doesn’t like Elvis Presley?” was the priest’s baffled response); the teacher – a Christian Brother – who regularly slapped him round the face for trivial misdemeanours. “The idea I had growing up – and I held on to it into my 40s – was that my folks only cared about me as long as I was number one in my class,” he recalls, although he leaves it to his readers to make any connection between this and the inner drive that has made him so successful.
As it is, Patterson stresses the accidental nature of his achievements. He fell into advertising and seems to have loathed it, but nevertheless became CEO of the J Walter Thompson agency aged 38; his portrayal of that pressure-cooker “If you don’t come in to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday” world is very entertaining.
He scribbled high-brow fiction in his spare time but it was only when he gave up being a “literary snoot” that he hit the jackpot. The invention of the frill-free Patterson style was fortuitous, like the discovery of penicillin: he had been writing a detailed outline for a book when it occurred to him that the outline itself might appeal to readers who hated stubbing their toes on scene-setting description or complexity of character during their eager pursuit of What Happens Next.
Patterson is rarely slow to praise himself, but is also touchingly honest about his failings. He credits his partner, Jane Blanchard, who came from a wealthier background, with changing his view of himself as an “insecure knucklehead”; there is a lovely story about her allaying his worries over the niceties of how to behave in a posh restaurant by plunging her face into her stew and emerging covered in “brown gloop”.
Jane died of a brain tumour aged 39, and Patterson is at his best in the three chapters – that is, eight pages – he devotes to their relationship, managing to bring her alive and convey something of his grief without breaking his usual whistle-stop pace.
Alas, about halfway through the book, once he is established as a bestseller, the wheels come off. The loosely chronological structure is abandoned in favour of a rambling series of thematic reflections, parables, saggy anecdotes. An increase in the number of dad jokes, cheesy disc jockey-ish links and rather half-hearted jibes at his rival Stephen King suggests decreasing interest in his material. Do we really need to have a chapter of gushing gratitude for his PA, including a description of her mother’s funeral?
Or – in defence of his practice of using co-writers for his novels – a list of successful collaborations, from Shakespeare and Fletcher to Simon and Garfunkel? The nadir is reached in a section on celebrity encounters in which he describes meeting Tom Cruise, playing golf with Donald Trump and so on, without vouchsafing a single interesting detail about them.
One wonders if, like many people once they become full-time writers, Patterson lives most vividly inside his own head these days – he does, after all, have at least 30 manuscripts on the go at any one time – and so has lost the capacity for sharp observation that provided material for the early chapters.
For whatever reason, he gives the impression of a writer extemporising ways to reach a contracted word count while drawing on a dangerously depleted well of inspiration.
The Stories of My Life by James Patterson is published by Century at £20. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
