After reading through so many of Roald Dah’sl books this past year with my family, I was very much looking forward to reading his two-book autobiography, though admittedly I thought I would have to read them alone. While my kids (ages 10 and 11) certainly loved Dahl’s wacky-magical worlds, his odd characters and made-up words, I didn’t think they’d be interested in delving into his personal life. Boy was I wrong!

In the hands of an expert writer like Dahl, an autobiography—true on every point—can still read like a novel fit with irony, cliffhangers, and characters almost too wild to believe. My kids ate this book up as I read it to them, and they all but begged for its follow-up, Going Solo. We’re a quarter way through that book already, and still they’re fully engaged. When we finally read the last children’s story in his bibliography, I’m not quite sure where we’ll turn next. I’ve already read some of his adult short-stories (Someone Like You), so I don’t think we’ll go there just yet. But it will be hard to find a good replacement after the fun run we’ve had with Roald Dahl.

The plan with which he attacks the telling of his own life’s story is unique yet a method that I think every autobiographer should follow. Rather than sharing the mundane facts that he himself would have had to research (family backgrounds, dates, world goings-on that provide context for his life events), Dahl merely shares the anecdotes that stand out most sharply in his memory. I bet that you or I could sit down some weekend and try to jot down our most vivid memories from childhood and compile a list at least as long as Dahl’s, yet few of us could bring these memories to life in such an enthralling way.

Dahl discusses one element of this style of writing in his chapter on the “The Great Mouse Plot”:

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty. I must tell you therefore that it was I and I alone who had the idea for the great and daring Mouse Plot. We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine. (35)

Later he shares the brilliant yet harshly truthful reality of life as a writer:

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it. (171-172)

One aspect of Dahl’s childhood that stands out most starkly in his memory is life at his various boarding schools, particularly the ones where the headmasters, teachers, and older boys had the right to beat the younger students with canes for even the slightest of infractions. Elements of these school experiences have made their way into some of Dahl’s stories (Matilda comes to mind), and what a pleasure it is for us to recognize these grains of reality when we reread these favorite tales. Of course, experiencing such beatings was never a pleasure for him, but taking the opportunity to, say, out the Archbishop of Canterbury as the most vicious beater of all? Well, it seems Dahl got a last laugh on that one.

This final point was one that opened a discussion for us as we read, because Dahl openly admits his dislike for the church, not necessarily because he hated God, but because he hated the behavior of the people who represented the church! I highlighted to my kids that they will someday meet people who feel the same way, not because they despise the faith we hold so dear, but because they’ve been hurt by “Christians” who claim to hold the same faith the we hold and yet live lives of despicable hypocrisy. They essentially “blaspheme the worthy name by which we are called” and scare people away from Christ. It’s a harsh reality, but it’s reality nonetheless. We can learn a lot from the honest recollections of an unbeliever like Dahl, if at least we take the effort to do so.

I’m very happy that my kids let me read this first installment to the Roald Dahl autobiography to them and doubly excited that they’ve been gripped by the second installment as well. I look forward to reading more from him, all of his final kids’ books as a family and a few more of his macabre short stories myself. The Year of Dahl continues!

©2023 E.T.

Read More from Roald Dahl:

• Adult Short Stories:
  Over to You (1946)
  Someone Like You (1953)
  The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977)
  
• Children Fiction:
  James and the Giant Peach (1961)
  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
  The Magic Finger (1964)
  Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970)
  Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
  Danny the Champion of the World (1975)
  The Enormous Crocodile (1978)
  The Twits (1980)
  George’s Marvelous Medicine (1981)
  The BFG (1982)
  Dirty Beasts (1983)
  Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)
  The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me (1985)
  Going Solo (1986)
  Matilda (1988)
  Esio Trot (1990) 
  The Minpins (1991)
  The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)