Having just finished reading Donald Sturrock’s Roald Dahl: Storyteller, I have a few thoughts and a lot of gripes. These aren’t academic critiques by any means… But I am concerned as to why there are so few book-length academic texts on Dahl but multiple biographies. There are seven biographies and four autobiographies, by my count (only books written in English/not translated) — but just six full-length books (see bibliography). I’m happy to be corrected on this!
The first issue? Its length
Sturrock’s book is well researched (often filling in the gaps of Treglown’s book) and thorough (at a whopping 568 pages) …but the book has a lot of conjecture which could easily have been cut. I can’t count all of the comments of disbelief I’ve written in the margins of this book. Astoundingly, Sturrock doesn’t begin covering Dahl’s writing career until page 168 – yes. Page one hundred and sixty eight. For an unfathomable reason, Sturrock opens the book with a tale about Dahl’s great grandfather who escaped a church fire. This is a relative that Dahl never met and doesn’t mention in his autobiographies, nor reference in his literary career. Dahl was also famously uninterested in his family history. Sturrock appears to be drawing a line through Dahl’s lineage to see where Dahl has acquired his many characteristics, like bravery, quick-thinking and crisis management. It is awe-inspiring how off-piste this is. The early chapters are a fantastic example of what it looks like to take the long way to the point.
Rerouting to… US-UK Wartime Tensions
Sturrock then launches into what I can only describe as a political history of World War II that just happens to feature Roald Dahl. Sturrock gives the reader a wealth of information about tensions between the UK and the US which are only informed by the benefit of hindsight, discussing at length the tensions between UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as William Stephenson (leader of the secret service network British Security Coordination) and US Vice President Henry Wallace. It is baffling to read so many pages about World War II history given that Dahl’s early writing doesn’t incorporate these themes; Dahl’s early work focuses on his specific experiences of flying in the RAF and living in Africa. Amidst these politically tense paragraphs Sturrock dives deep into The Gremlins, Dahl’s almost-project with Walt Disney, possibly catering to a presumed desire of readers to link such huge names in children’s popular culture. But he does so at the expense of exploring Dahl’s wartime stories, glossing over them to spend more time analysing Dahl’s failed first novel, Some Time Never. In fact, over the early chapters, Dahl’s literary career is only sprinkled into his wartime activities and subsequent return to the UK. Perhaps Sturrock assumes that the reader of his book is already familiar with Dahl’s wartime stories and is looking to learn about failed projects, but I’d argue that both successful and failed creative endeavours are of equal significance.
Sturrock wastes no time giving backstories on high-ranking political figures Dahl meets during 1942-1943, but very little context about the stories Dahl was writing and their influences, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. Sturrock often says things such as: “It’s hard to know whether Dahl knew…” and “Dahl was probably unaware…”. Sturrock isn’t short of historical information about political tensions and secret missions, private conversations and ulterior motives – but a lot of this information could only have been gleaned once documents were released after the war. If it is truly unknown whether Dahl had the same knowledge as Sturrock currently does, I’m unsure why it was included. Dangling this information in front of the reader can only lead to conjecture.
Sturrock’s War of the Women
Perhaps my project’s focus on misogyny in Dahl’s fiction has made me sensitive to this, but there are two chapters which stick out to me for their treatment of women. The chapter ‘Indomitable’ which follows the days after Dahl’s first wife Patricia Neal suffers from life-altering strokes, and chapter ‘The Gentle Warmth of Love’ which documents Dahl’s affair with Felicity. It appears that Sturrock’s admiration of Dahl is unrestrainable during these chapters, in which Pat is described in language such as “complain[ing] vociferously”, “her appearance was so upsetting”, “she was a dependent” and “demanding” – whereas Dahl is described as a hero-figure whose “responsibilities were immense”. Sturrock notes that “Roald might have been overwhelmed, but it was the kind of crisis he was able to endure because it offered the opportunity to take complete control of the situation and also because he saw the chance of a positive outcome” (p.413). In their New York Times review, Claire Messud, wrote in their review that “there are places where [Sturrock’s] portrayal verges uncomfortably on the reverent”. I believe this to be true when discussing Dahl’s affairs and marriages, as well as his fictional works.
While a defence of this language may be Sturrock’s attempt at recreating the power imbalance of the time, the language continues throughout the rest of the book, where the difference between Sturrock’s treatment of her versus Felicity is stark. (It may be useful to know that Sturrock was approached by Felicity Dahl for the biography and has even built a career on adapting Dahl’s works for various media…) In the early days of Pat and Roald’s relationship, Sturrock introduces Pat as so:
“Dahl crossed paths unexpectedly with…Patricia Neal, [a] dark-haired Southern beauty, with her distinctive deep chocolate voice, had just completed a series of live shows for American troops stationed in Korea, which culminated in her almost being raped by a sex-starved soldier in Seoul.” (p.315)
and when Felicity enters the Dahls’ lives, she is:
“Liccy was, and still is, a striking beauty – her father’s Indian blood immediately apparent in her raven hair, olive eyes and Mediterranean complexion…Liccy’s easy charm, her elegance and her pragmatic gaiety…” (p.453-454)
The difference in the language cannot be refuted and it is difficult not to read a personal preference of character into the text (again, this may be shaped by Sturrock’s relationship with the family). But let’s not forget: Pat had had three consecutive strokes, was pregnant, and was subjected to a rough and rigorous rehabilitation plan while less able to communicate. But why is she first introduced to the reader as a love-lost would-be rape victim who has recently ended an affair with a married man? Why is that how she is framed?
While Sturrock makes known how harsh Dahl was on Neal after her stroke, he also throws in Dahl’s hideous comments about her into their texts with little analysis of their effect on Pat. Dahl described Pat as an “enormous pink cabbage” and “nitwit”. Irrespective of Dahl’s flair for hyperbole, these are comments which are beyond unpleasant, and enter Sturrock’s biography as a justification for Dahl’s treatment of Pat. In effect, Sturrock supports Dahl’s campaign to transform the pink cabbage into something… well, into something less unattractive. There is a bitter taste in these passages.
Overlooking Anti-semitism
The other ill-handled subject is Dahl’s well-recorded anti-semitism. Apparently informed by something the reader of Roald Dahl: A Storyteller is not privy to, Sturrock assures the reader that Dahl is not anti-semitic (the term is not available to search in the index, either). Given that this book was published in 2010, 10 years before the Dahl family’s discreet public apology for Dahl’s anti-semitic comments, Sturrock’s defence may have been coloured by the family’s denial of it during their private interviews. But, given that Sturrock’s book was published after Jeremy Treglown’s biography, Roald Dahl: A Biography, in which Dahl’s anti-semitism is more fully documented, Sturrock has no defence for his lack of research into the issue. In fact, in regards to Dahl’s review of God Cried, Sturrock writes: “[Dahl’s] rhetoric, though sympathetic to the Palestinians, got the better of him, and some of the article readers as if it wa written deliberately to irritate Jewish readers. Most inflammatory was the repeated comparison of Israel to Nazy Germany” (p.510). And yet Sturrock is here cleaning up Dahl’s intention to…not offend Jewish people?
Sturrock even acknowledges Dahl’s comment that “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity…even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” But while Sturrock acknowledges the now-infamous line and doesn’t hide it away, he dismisses it as evidence of anti-semitism. Sturrock claims that Dahl “confided” this “over the phone to Mike Coren” in the aftermath of the backlash to Dahl’s review of God Cried – the language here making it sound as though this is a private conversation and Coren has left Dahl to hang in public. No: this was a phone interview for a printed article. Dahl did not “confide” anything – it was always going to be a public comment.
Dahl’s comments haven’t just aged badly – they were awful when they were made and remained awful. In fact, Dahl’s antisemitism was so public that the Royal Mint refused an application for a commemorative coin for his centenary. Sturrock’s dismissal of the issue is an inspiringly short-sighted view. He gives us all of the same evidence of anti-semitism that has been publicly documented before, and yet doesn’t read the evidence as, well… evidence. He takes the lack of written evidence of Dahl’s discrimination his Jewish publishers as proof of the fact (ignoring the mass evidence of written animosity). In a review for The Guardian, Kathryn Hughes writes that “one senses a strain in the book’s tone whenever more controversial aspects of his subject’s life come into view”. As It is an overwhelmingly inappropriate read of the situation and a dismissive stance to take.
This book overall has been useful to fill in the gaps of other biographies, but should by no means be used without checking facts first. A lot of it, I think, “gobblefunks with words”.
Autobiographies
Roald Dahl (1984): Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl (2016): More About Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl (1986): Going Solo
Roald Dahl (1993): My Year
Biographies (by Year of Publication)
Jeremy Treglown (1993): Roald Dahl: A Biography
Donald Sturrock (2010): Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl
Michael Rosen (2012): Fantastic Mr Dahl
Emma Fischel (2016): The Life of Roald Dahl
Andrew Donkin (2016): Roald Dahl’s Life in Stories
Nadia Cohen (2019): The Real Roald Dahl
Matthew Denison (2022): Teller of the Unexpected: The Life of Roald Dahl
Book-length Scholarly Texts on Dahl (by Year of Publication)
Ann Alston, Catherine Butler (2012): Roald Dahl: New Casebooks
Jacob Held (2014): Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then
Laura Viñas Valle (2016): De-constructing Dahl
Tom Solomon (2016): Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine
Damian Walford Davies, ed (2016): Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected
J.L. Gargett (2017): Roald Dahl: The Master of Darkness and Light
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