The Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations
Mark Glanville

From football hooligan to opera singer, from the Cockney Reds to Catullus, from a hectic household to tranquility of spirit, Mark Glanville has travelled many paths, been many people – this is his remarkable story.The story of Mark Glanville’s journey from violently bullied Jewish boy (Goldberg is the real family name) at Pimlico comprehensive to Principal Bass with the Lisbon Opera via a period travelling the country as a member of the Cockney Reds, the notorious Manchester United-supporting hooligans.Throughout all these vastly opposed phases and worlds, Glanville’s driving force is his search for self-knowledge. His home life is overshadowed by the larger-than-life character of his famous father and his extensive philandering, his mother’s obsession with psychotherapy and hostile relationships with his siblings. He fights to defend his Jewishness at school, only to be told by his father that he has no right to call himself one. A bookish teenager Glanville is obsessed with jazz and opera but he spends his weekends with a group of hooligans who are unsure whether to accept him or beat him up because of his posh accent. Then reading Classics at Oxford (explaining his absence away to the Cockney Reds as a four-year prison sentence for manslaughter) he is simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the Oxbridge ‘society set’. The story of his struggle towards equilibrium, to learn from his own and his family’s mistakes, and to find his own identity, eventually re-embracing Judaism and music, is both gripping and inspiring.An impressive new voice, Mark Glanville writes with refreshing honesty, humour and a complete lack of sentimentality. The utterly opposing aspects of his life make for a sometimes controversial but always fascinating read.

The Goldberg Variations

MARK GLANVILLE

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_e7b6e8a4-f7cf-56a2-b171-bf595d423614)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Published by Flamingo 2004

Previously published in Great Britain in hardback by Flamingo 2003

Copyright © Mark Glanville 2003

Mark Glanville asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007118427

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN 9780007383306

Version: 2016-03-17

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PRAISE (#ulink_85db4020-975f-5020-8da3-63a4e41c0f9e)

‘Like C4’s ‘Faking It’ makeovers, The Goldberg Variations opposes two purposes seemingly too different for one person to undertake successfully. Glanville’s ongoing battle between football and music fascinates. One facilitates the other – his first trip to OldTrafford was a reward for passing Grade 5 clarinet. One impinges on the other – concerned about protecting his opera voice, Glanville lowers it an octave on the terraces. The emerging dialectic evolves alongside traditional rites-of-passage (first solo trip abroad, first love, etc) and against a backdrop of troubled sexuality – teenage frustrations kindled by his sisters and an inability to climax with girlfriends. Glanville’s openness is seductive and his memoir is disarming.’

Time Out

‘A richly enjoyable and moving memoir.’

Tribune

‘A chilling account of life on the terraces and of the loyalty it engenders. It is also a fascinating description of the long process of having your voice professionally trained for the opera stage.’

Irish Examiner

‘A readable, funny and intelligent story of a man’s struggle to find himself among a confusion of different lives.’

Cork Evening Echo

DEDICATION (#u3b8f488a-8d0a-5ad9-9f9e-c806dc4e76ed)

For Joshua and Arabella

Were the wind to blow even slightly against themMy eyes would refuse to close HITTAAN BIN AL-MU’ALLAA

CONTENTS

Cover (#u05480b28-eacf-5552-99d0-e285bba0788f)

Title Page (#ub94920a6-ddcf-5ed5-a1d5-9ea31b51fab1)

Copyright (#ude850815-d87e-55ac-b94e-9caa72db52fe)

Praise (#u9b6f82c0-7180-5578-ad7c-4b431ec87465)

Dedication (#u358bf707-8099-5553-a2c4-401003f31be7)

ARIA (#u61dc84b3-7744-5434-8853-81263c8077e3)

VARIATION ONE: The Football Hooligan (#u4a3b9057-8ab2-5008-827d-e756b9d3f4c3)

VARIATION TWO: The Oxford Classicist (#litres_trial_promo)

VARIATION THREE: The Opera Singer (#litres_trial_promo)

VARIATION FOUR: The Jew (#litres_trial_promo)

ARIA DA CAPO: The Vedl (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted by voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shows us preserve nothing of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this residue of Combray.

Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust

ARIA (#ulink_3fd5d459-47fb-5fd0-bec6-3f4d53af0ce4)

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages and several cultural traditions. It is preciscly this that defines my identity.