John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his
experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in
prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin Classics
edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe. In his searing
autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London
without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison
sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search
of drink or prey.
When not united in their common aim of
acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes
or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed
to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition
of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison.
John Healy (b.
1943) was born into an impoverished, Irish
immigrant family, in the slums of Kentish Town, North London. Out of
school by 14, pressed into the army and intermittently in prison, Healy
became an alcoholic early on in life. Despite these obstacles Healy
achieved remarkable, indeed phenomenal expertise in both writing and
chess, as outlined in the autobiographical The Grass Arena.
The Grass Arena : An Autobiography - John Healy & Colin MacCabe
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