When an old man dies, a library burns.

Today I learned of the passing of the novelist Tom Sharpe.

Tom Sharpe 1928-2013

Tom Sharpe didn't write literary classics, his works were described by many as ribald farce with plot lines that defied rational belief and an obsession with ridiculing unnatural peccadilloes be they sexual perversion, violence obsessions or outright delusion. My tiny mind has found his kind of writing agreeable for years and I happily reread his books which is a mark of quality of an author, that their works can be picked up and re-read and are just as absorbing as they were when read the first time.


His novels threw the lampoon at the apartheid regime in South Africa, the aristocracy, the police, the establishment, academia and the public at large. He chose his targets and blasted them with a blunderbuss filed with vitriol, satire and lunacy. His style of writing could have been criticised for being formulaic, you always knew what you were going to get when you picked up one of his novels, but I was always surprised and delighted when some ingenious farcical twist would set the page alight. What kind of mind comes up with the idea of a college lawn covered in methane filled condoms that are linked to a massive explosion that destroys the place or a room full of South African policemen with electrodes attached to their genitals while they have pornography played to them as a form of aversion therapy? Tom Sharpe's novels read in a very similar vein to how he described writing them: you find yourself being happily dragged along like a person being walked by an over-enthusiastic Irish wolfhound. There were seldom moments of quiet in his novels unless there was a character who had been stripped, drugged and shot was slowly coming to and attempting to feel their way around whatever B&D dungeon they had been temporarily dumped in for convenience - yes this happened a lot. Some of Tom Sharpe's novels were adapted into television: notably Blott on the Landscape, which was adapted by Malcolm Bradbury and starred David Suchet, Geraldine James and George Cole; Porterhouse Blue with the elegant Ian Richardson and David Jason; and Wilt starring Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. These also make for timeless viewing.

Like his writing, Tom Sharpe lived his life very much on his terms. The moment when he no longer had to work for someone else and he could support himself with his writing, he chucked in his job. He enjoyed pottering around in his garden, smoking and hoovering up whisky. For a period of about ten years he didn't produce any books, bedeviled with writers block, but he was happy enough to doodle away at ideas until something of quality began to establish itself. In a perfect world, this is what I would like to do myself but my beloved Attila is quite rightly obsessed with financial security. Who knows, maybe it just takes a leap of faith and belief in one's own talent like Sharpe. His self-belief was not misplaced: Tom Sharpe joins the great typing pool in the sky with PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, John Mortimer and Kingsley Amis. I like to imagine it as a massive oak panelled study with an ever-full decanter and a decent fug of tobacco smoke. 
And laughter. Lots of laughter.
Goodbye Tom.