After I finished this book last Thurs/Friday, I was aiming to write as an immediate response as possible. I was going to briefly write down a few thoughts, but I got a bit carried away. Excuse typos, rhetorical flourishes etc.
Red or Dead by David Peace – A Review.
Oscar Wilde's famously argued that, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Biographies and autobiographies it must be said, on the whole, bare out this maxim. They are usually one-sided, biased, mostly with an axe to grind or score to settle. I, like many others I suspect, read biographies/autobiographies armed with suspicion, on the look out for subtext. And so what of fiction in relation to Wilde's observations about truth? What of the completely made up stuff? Oddly, one might argue, in many ways, fiction can sometime shine a light upon and uncover a truth more clearly than non-fiction. Sometimes. Paradoxical as it may seem, in many ways, the spirit of a universal truth can sometimes be found not in the bald facts, but through the act of imagination. Through the act of creation. Religious texts are acts of the imagination, contain very few actual facts, yet millions across the globe find within their pages truths upon which to live their lives.
Wilde's sentiments feels even more ironic when sitting down to review David Peace's Red Or Dead, because if there is one thing we know for sure about Bill Shankly, then it's the value he invested in honesty, truth and simplicity. Perhaps, then, a fictional account of Shankly's life may bring us closer to the truth of man, reveal the man of honesty and simplicity, bring light to his life, to his footballing philosophy, perhaps even help us understand the tenets of his socialism.
I started reading Red or Dead on the eve of the new football season. As somebody who is sick of modern football, I was in need of some inspiration for the up-coming season. And, after 90 minutes in the company of BT sports Michael Owen, I sensed it was going to be increasingly difficult to find this season. Nor was I willing to go looking for it in the increasingly hyperactive presentation from the game's owners, Sky Sport. In contrast to the modern game, Peace's book on Shankly shows us a simpler time, (not innocent, however, and far from it) in which the hype, hyperbole and large sprinkling of horseshit we have to sit through via Sky, didn't triumph over skill, determination and tactical nous. The importance of the collective endeavour of the team espoused by Shankly, and any modern day manager worth his salt – yet seemingly forgotten in the presentation of the game these days – seems at odds with the British neoliberal model of football, especially the football model which sells itself on the individual brilliance of one player in a particular team. And, as John Barnes reminded us so eloquently on BBC2's Newsnight prior to the season's beginning, these multi-millionaire superstars now appear to think of themselves above the team. Better than the team, indeed. Something which Shankly wouldn't have allowed to take root within any of the clubs he managed.
Red or Dead is built around a rather conventional and straight forward narrative – unlike say the brilliantly executed Dammed United, which switched from the past tense, showing Clough's journey from deadly, clinical centre forward, injured and on the scrap head, to the present day 1974 and his acceptance of the job as manager of Leeds United. The switching of the narrative from past to present worked within that particular book for many reasons, most notably as a way to show and explore the roots of Clough's almost pathological hatred for Don Revie's Leed's United.
Perhaps Bill Shankly's life was more straightforward. He lived it straight. Straight and honest. Thus the narrative runs (quite literally) with ever growing momentum and dynamism in one direction: from 1959 up to his death in 1981. The vast majority of the book takes place between 1959 and 1974, and is concerned with the minutiae of pre-season training, of pre-match preparation, of game after game after game. It's only when you immerse yourself in a text such as this and read hundreds of pages of the prose in one sitting, that you realise that football, like history, is just one fucking thing after another. One game after another. One post season after another. One pre-season after another. One league season after another. One cup competition after another. And Peace also shows what Shankly knew instinctively: greatness comes with repetition, with dedication, with passion, with obsession to the task, the sport, the art, you have chosen to pursue. If you cannot dedicate yourself to becoming great at your thing, then all the natural ability in the world will not suffice. For, just as we see today with the many exceptional athletes, in many different fields – both in football and other sports – it is the hours and hours on the training pitch, the hours and hours of honing and refining muscle memory. It this which counts most, this which breeds success.
Just as we see with outstanding artists, musicians etc. it is the hours of repetition, the hours of dedication, the hours of passionate obsession you dedicate to your art, your sport, your thing; it is the hours and hours of repetition that makes the difference. And Shankly knew this. And Shankly practiced this. Think of how many times Shankly used the phrase “drum(med) in to them.” Shankly not only tried to mould the player, through drumming things into them, but also attempted to mould the man, build the character. Bill saw that dedication, ability and character make the great footballer, and perhaps in Kevin Keegan we saw the greatest example of what a Shankly footballer should look like. Not the greatest or most natural football player to be born, yet – under the tutelage of Shankly – shaped into perhaps the first modern football specimen.
For some reviewers and readers this matching, this parallelling of form, style, structure and subject matter is too much. It the biggest criticism used against Peace, especially from those who say the 'general' reader (whatever/whoever that is) cannot possibly be expected to 'get' this form of literary modernism. Indeed the repetition and the endless description of Bill undertaking even the most mundane of tasks can take up page after page. And, to an extent, I agree with the critics. But only insofar as if you are going to treat this book lightly, if you are only going to dip in and read a handful pages at a time...Then, of course, it is bound to alienate. It's a book that requires you to pick up its rhythm, to follow it prose style like you would an intricate jazz composition, a classical music symphony or a concept album. However, I would advise if you are going attack this colossus of a book (walk around it, it must be seven feet tall!) take it on as Shankly would take it on. With passion, with utter and total dedication, with an obsession bordering on the insane. Devote yourself to it. Forget about your loved ones for a week or two. Forget the missus/partner exists. Dedicate yourself to this book. Lose yourself in the book, lose yourself to the hypnotic prose, dedicate yourself to the rhythms of the prose, like a whirling dervish entranced to the sound of sufi music. Follow the ups and downs of the football season. Get all the facts and figures. See titles won and lost, cup finals won and lost. Derbies won and lost and drawn.
It is is literally all here. Everything you ever wanted to know about Liverpool FC – 1959 to 1974 – but where too afraid to ask yer arl fella.
In many ways, Peace also shows us that Shankly was a revolutionary figure, too. He revolutionised football. Shankly came around at the right time to revolutionise not just the sport, but popular working class culture. There was that moment of great synchronicity – the revolutionary popular culture and emerging youth culture of the period coinciding with Shankly's revolution at Anfield. The Merseybeat and emergence of modern day football culture are conceived at that moment when Shankly emerges as the first, great modern football manager. Indeed, the dialectic between Shankly and the crowd creates the sort of football atmosphere we all take for granted today.
Despite what many may say about how Shankly would hate the game today, that he would have no place, that he would be lost etc. I have to say I'm not so sure. The excessive money and antics of 'star' players engineering moves would obviously sicken him. However, his methods, his tactical nous, his attention to detail, his training and match preparation appear to be cutting edge for the time. His knowledge of players, (from the first division to the fourth) of upcoming fixtures from all leagues, appeared encyclopedic. I'm not sure many modern day football managers are as ahead of the game in this day, as Shankly appeared to be during his. Indeed, there is a reason why for a decade or more we were the best team in Europe. It didn't happen by chance. And that it continued without Bill at the helm says even more for the way he transformed the club. The foundations lasted because of all the work Shankly put in from 1959 to 1974. Take away the obscene finances, and I'd belief Shankly would be well at home pitting his wits against Pep, Jose, Jurgen, Carlos, Rafa and the other top European managers.
And yet despite the brilliance of the man, he was a real man of the people. This phrase is often over-used and not really applicable today to a world of millionaire celebrities, overpaid footballers and even most lefty politicians. How somebody so famous, so popular, so adored, could still act as an everyman, as one of the people, as a man who would stand next to you on the Kop, is quite staggering in that age and in this. Stories of his every day kindness, especially after his retirement, flow from the pages. His gestures of unthinking charity and kindness as important to him as his days as a football manager. People mattered to Shanks. One episode which shows his visit to an injured teenager footballer in Alder Hey hospital is inspirational. And I mean properly inspirational. I wanted to get off my fat arse and run a few miles and cycle like mad, then swim a few lengths of the baths, immediately after reading. Imagine what this man was like in the dressing room? No wonder we became famous as team which never gave in, which came from behind, which scored so many last minute goals. The spirit of Istanbul was forged across the dressing rooms of the 1960s England.
Having said all that I have, is there an absence of war, an absence of conflict from the narrative? All great literature at some point must present the protagonist with an antagonist, right? In The Damned United, Peace presents Clough's hubris in taking on the Leeds United job, and his ultimate failure. Peace presents Clough in conflict with directors and the board of Derby County Football Club for large parts of that novel. Most of all, it shows Clough wrestling with his own, inner demons.
In Red or Dead there are hints of conflict with LFC directors. One or two episodes of conflict with players. Hints that Bill may have been fighting some inner demons, and his behaviour after numbing defeats, especially his obsessive cleaning of the kitchen, oven etc are suggestive of this. There are also brief moments were we suspect that there may be a hint of resentment at the manner in which he is treated by Liverpool Football Club after his retirement. But, as Bill says to the media when interviewed about his biography after his retirement, why do you highlight the one per cent of criticism, when the book is ninety-nine per cent praise and support of others?
So, if not conflict, then what? Poignancy perhaps. There are passages after August 1974 which made me search for invisible dust particles lodged in those impossible to reach areas of my eyes. For instance, Bill on the outside looking in at one of the greatest football teams of all time many triumphs. The team he helped to build, winning the trophy that so cruelly alluded him – the European Cup. Indeed one the most profound moments in the entire book is not the winning of trophies, not the devastating defeats but a simple scene in a West Derby cafe during Bill's retirement. This is the literature, this is the great writing. This is the truth that fact cannot quite capture. It is in these little moments of pathos where we glimpse both the greatness of the man and the greatness of the writer.
Make no mistake, Red or Dead is a hagiography – something Peace openly admits. He once wrote that Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto was the fifth gospel and in some ways reading Red or Dead is analogous to a religious experience. The text is suffused with religiosity. Bill saying his prayers, Bill on his knees praying for Matt Busby and those who lost their lives in Munich. Bill's sacrifices and sermons. Bill in retirement akin to a Jesus:
“Bill carried these memories. A great weight Bill bore, a piece of wood Bill carried. A piece of wood which left Bill with splinters, splinters in his back. In his shoulders and in his neck. But splinters which gave Bill faith, splinters which made Bill believe. Believe in the things that had been, once. Believe in the things that could be, again. After the resurrection, before the resurrection...”
But the religiosity of Red Or Dead is not exclusively to be found in Bill's own Christianity, which he practises every day with the people he meets, and with as much dedication as he does in the training drills he used for his players. The religiosity is apparent in the book's form, in its very structure, in the books very DNA. For it is devotional book. Like the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's sufi inspired songs, like a Buddhist mantra, chanted over and over, or a Gregorian chant. The narrative is a devotional song to it's hero. Like the heroes of the ancient epics, many of which were thought to have been sung aloud, this novel should heard orally. And like those great epics and like those great devotional songs, the effect is the same. The intention is the same. And that intention is to transform one's consciousness.
And reading this book is transformational.
If not the Bible, then it is the Das Kapital of football books. In one brilliant passage Peace even paraphrases the Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci. “The old was dying and the new could not be born.” It is an epic tome about an epic man. A man who lived a life as simple and basic as Mahatma Ghandi. Shankly's socialism, like his Christianity, is simple. It's not the socialism of scientific schema or Leninist dogma. It is what Billy Bragg once referred to as socialism of the heart. The socialism of the everyday, brought to life most vividly in his conversations with the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Reading this book is transformational. I agree with The Farm's Peter Hooton, who upon reading the book said he felt like a Jehovah's Witness and wanted to knock upon doors imploring others to read it.
So, if you too wish for a transformative experience, read this book. If you're an atheist, like myself, it's the nearest thing through literature (scripture?) you'll have to a religious experience. As Peace recently said, Shankly was not just a great football man, he was a great man. One of the great men of the 20th century. Be inspired by the great man and read the book. The book about a great, inspirational man. Billy Shankly.