I Diss Spare

Wednesday is about books. Today, I read Prince Harry's "Spare" so that you don't have to.

I read Prince Harry’s book. I wrote a few sentences about it on Goodreads. (I log every book I read and write a sentence or two about it when I’m done). It’s an odd thing, writing about Spare – because it’s the very epitome of Change The Channel Syndrome. I should just ignore it. Why bother, right? And to complain about it is to feed the supporting machine. The book is bizarre, petty, overcooked, grim, confusing and completely lacking in any awareness whatsoever. But me saying so might only add to sales, or interest, or continue a conversation…which leads to sales, or interest…etc.

Still, I battled against my first instinct, and read the book. Its unintentionally comical tone a feat of supreme absurdity.

I’d probably never be called a royalist. People parade around the idea of tradition, but it’s an archaic, outmoded institution. As I told one royalist recently, “you might as well be talking about Day of Our Lives”. It’s all just fandom. Quoting significant dates and naming names is impressive scrapbooking, but it’s hobbyist nonsense. I am all for hobbyist nonsense by the way. Anyone that’s read anything I’ve written here on other days will know that already. But the idea that we must bow to the royals, or knowledge of them, as anything significant in this world now seems so utterly absurd to me. In fact it always has in my time on earth. They are tradition for the very sake of tradition. A reminder of disgusting wealth and privilege. So, yeah, not really a royalist.

I’m also appalled at people’s mock concern that this is the palace burning. This is the final proof. This is the clue that something is up? Someone said recently that they felt the end was coming, Prince Andrew’s scandal, Harry’s emancipation, the deaths of Prince Phil and then the Queen…end times, finally, they believed. But it was said with an End of an Era sadness. My reply probably wasn’t what they were looking for. Since it was my believe that if a champion horse breeder kept all its best horses together in the one confined space forever so that they’d all start fucking each other they would eventually stop winning races.

I thought it was quite an apt analogy given the subject.

Prince Harry’s book arrives, on the back of Oprah appearances, and a Netflix show, and a global media assault, as some Final Word/Launching Pad. This is Prince Harry The Celebrity Telling His Life, Yo! This is a profoundly American book about an absurdly British caricature. The American celebrity life that Harry is chasing/settling into is merely one of the paradoxes on offer as you read through the trauma and privilege of his life. This is his escape?

Telling everyone everything!

Except it’s not everything.

And it’s not Prince Harry.

For the purposes of this memoir, the role of Prince Harry is being written by J.R. Moehringer. He wrote his own memoir, The Tender Bar, more recently a George Clooney directed film. He also ghosted the books by tennis legend Andre Agassi (Open) and Nike magnate Phil Knight (Shoe Dog).

Moehringer is very good at doing circle-backs, at milking some form of frothy emotion. He picks up on Harry making a slight dig about William’s hairline, and uses it. He picks up on Charles’ loner persona and parades around talisman teddy bear and other sad-guy comforts. He “Americanises” the Harry story with the right subtle/not-subtle shades.

Moehringer decides that Harry’s memories most masquerade as absolute truth. Since that will not only write white, it will wring gravitas.

But what memories! Harry’s frost-bitten penis instead of Prince Andrew’s rotten todger. So, if this really is his attempt to burn the palace down (part of what has attracted many readers, perhaps myself included) it’s not really delivering. Prince Andrew’s evil crimes don’t deserve a huge unpacking here, but they warrant more than a single sentence, don’t they? (Essentially, “my uncle is under investigation”).

No. Instead, we get Hazza’s bizarre friendship with Tyler Perry.

Weirder than that, we get this weird little case being made for Harry as Always The Outsider. Some lovable rogue. His self-worth slowly eroding from day one, since he was “Spare to the Heir”. His trauma building from age 12, because his mother was chased to her death by the press.

These are legitimate traumas. Absolutely.

But when it suits, he uses the cocoon of the palace and his privileged life as his be-all/end-all excuse. He’s not so much burning the palace down, as taking a few indulgent selfies outside the gates.

In his effort to appear interesting, and maybe even edgy, Harry just comes across like a spewing fountain. This is a leaky water hydrant of a memoir.

Brother William (“Willy”) argues with Harry (“Harold”) about who should be allowed THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA AS THEIR SPECIAL CAUSE. I mean this could not be more white privilege in the extreme if it tried.

Here:

“Africa was his thing” Willy then tells Harold – because it’s best to write about this using their cartoon character names they call one another, eh  - “I let you have veterans, why can’t you let me have Africa and rhinos?”

Harry travels to Africa often. And guess what, he loves it! He goes to the North Pole. And the South Pole. He makes a joke that it’s his “south pole” that gets frostbitten while at the North Pole (no, really). And all the while, in fairly boring prose, he goes about detailing this as if his travels are the result of tenacity and eagerness to learn in a hands-on/get-hands-dirty kind of way. Never the way of put-a-pin-in-the-map extreme privilege.

Every evocation of his mother and father is “Mummy” and “Pa” and while I might be a jerk for suggesting this, it’s all rather wince-inducing. And he almost describes his time at Eton as his living rough years. Eton!

That image of the two young boys walking behind the car, the world’s most public funeral – that is the image that will be used to defend Harry. And I’m not here to comment on his trauma. I’m here to comment on his monetising of that trauma. His monetising of an ill-conceived exit-strategy.

His mostly very boring book charts his early years growing up in a strange magic kingdom. Then to Eton. To the army. His mother’s death. A thin attempt at commenting on some world matters, like 9/11. And this just mostly serves to show the cotton wool of his life, he has no world view. He hasn’t had the need, darlings.

And then he meets Meghan. Referred to as Meg. Just as his mother is always Mummy. And his dad is always Pa. Meg is his soulmate. She is treated appallingly. And to argue against that is futile, it’s also scathingly incorrect. She was treated appallingly. Both in the gilded cage. And by the hostile press.

The book’s focus is mostly his fixation on loathing the press. But which press does he loathe? Because he is so thrilled here, with every tiny, bored facet of his life, and all of the media attention he’s gathered across the last 3-5 years in particular, that he seems to genuinely not realise (and maybe not even care) that it is absurd for a grown man to air this kind of rose-scented dirty washing while at the same time not ever actually own his actual shit.

That Nazi costume? Mistake mate. Simple. Referring to his friend as a wee cheeky Paki fella? Banter bro. And then, most embarrassingly, he actually writes about being cut off financially in his mid-30s with this apparently genuine despair:

“I recognised the absurdity…But I’d never asked to be financially dependent on Pa.”

The one bit of restraint in this book, was Harry not embroidering in an exclamation mark at that point.

His dad, Prince Charles for most of this, and now King Charles, is written about a lot in these pages, but is never really there. That’s probably clever, and might symbolise a father that was always around, but never really there. (Aren’t the royal just symbolic of something that’s not really there?) For Charles appears (in this book, anyway) to have made the choice early – to be a royal, rather than be a human. This is why he is able to say to Harry, “don’t read it, darling boy”. He says this over and over again. Trots it out as a platitude basically. Because it’s there when the press is out for Harry’s blood about him doing a Nazi salute. And it’s there when the family is being compared to pandas. And it’s there when Meg is being mocked in thinly-veiled racist, sexist attacks by a snide, juvenile press – forever desperate for the fag-ends waft of smoking gun stories.

“Don’t read it, darling boy”.

How I wish I’d taken Charles’ advice.