Strange Attractor Press have just published a new, expanded edition of TQ Editor John Doran’s anti-misery memoir Jolly Lad which is available here should you wish to buy a copy. (Support independent publishers over South American rainforest-nomenclature swiping corporate behemoths!)
Back in print due to his popular demand – he received an email saying it was impossible to buy cheaply on the internet in Portugal – the Expanded Edition contains an extra 28 page chapter ‘An English Trip’ detailing his 2015 tour of England with Arabrot and a brand spanking new illustration by Krent Able (which you can see above).
Copies of the book bought from the publisher come with a free CD featuring tracks by Nicky Wire (Manic Street Preachers), Abi & Neil (British Sea Power), Eccentronic Research Council, Teeth Of The Sea, English Heretic, Grumbling Fur, Mark Dicker, GNOD and Bronze Teeth.
Finally, Jolly Lad is getting an American release in September. More to follow.
Praise for Jolly Lad:
“I’ve read this book twice now and both times I’ve been astounded by John’s humour throughout the telling of the many frightening situations he found himself in, and by his brutal honesty in recounting his struggles with addiction and depression. He is a remarkable writer and I can’t wait for his next book.”
Cosey Fanni Tutti
“A wonderful tale… very funny.”
The Independent
“Some kind of major hellride.”
Mike Watt, the Minutemen, The Stooges
“Beautifully wrought… the work of a real writer propelled by that most vital of properties, self-doubt.”
Jonathan Meades
"An honest, brilliant, hilarious memoir that touches quite a lot of nerves. A must read for anyone who needs to sort their head out! Amen."
Gillian Gilbert, New Order
“A startling guide to self-destruction… hilarious yet insightful.”
Cian Traynor, The Irish Times
“Every page is studded with bluntly brilliant prose… Can’t recommend it highly enough.”
David Stubbs, author of Future Days and Mars By 1980
“John’s powerful words make you feel part of his harrowing trip as you turn each page. Like a modern version of a Dickens or Hogarth sketch but with its beginnings in St Helens."
Tim Burgess, The Charlatans
“Upon finishing Jolly Lad, a lyrical, endlessly compelling memoir by the music journalist John Doran, you will probably wonder how he is still alive. You will not be alone. The co-editor and co-founder of acclaimed music website The Quietus apparently has organs that could endure a nuclear firestorm.”
Musa Okwonga, The Huff Post
“Staggeringly poetic… steeped in deep truth about what it was, and is, to be a music nut in the 80s, 90s and the now.”
Simon Price
“The best book I’ve read about recovery since John Healy’s magnificently scalding The Grass Arena.”
Wyndham Wallace author of Lee, Myself & I
"John Doran’s remarkable Jolly Lad channels the vitality of Down And Out In Paris And London. It strikes the same timeless chimes. Politicised documentary as rich and pithy as Orwell’s own gives way to a deeper probe until we feel we are being given a guided tour of the inner world through the eyes of one surviving evangelist… This is a brave and vital voice, emerging."
Rick Holland, poet
“This book is one of the great first person narratives of recent times – funny, bruising and with an eye for the detail of horror. I hope invoking the spectres of Winterson, Joyce and Hunter S. Thompson is to offer fairly high praise. This is not the work of a Bright Young Thing – even by Doran’s own admission – but of a true maverick.”
Alexander Holbrook, Louder Than War
“[Jolly Lad] finds expression not in what [Doran] recounts but in the wit and style of his delivery… It’s a bravura story and there is no Disneyesque ending to the tale of an individual who is difficult to like but who has the honesty to admit there is little that could be liked about his past life.”
Irish Left Review
“A pugnacious account of the descent into addiction.”
Colm McCauliffe, The New Statesman
“An anti-misery memoir and alternative music celebration, Jolly Lad – the title’s a pun on jolie laide: “beautifully ugly” – is full of rock star encounters and hilarious one-liners as memorably droll as you’d expect from a Fall fan. With brutal honesty it also reminds that often it’s still the writers who lead lives larger and more interesting than many of their media-managed musician subjects.”
Ben Myers, MOJO 4/5
“The key to the book’s power and incision is Doran’s calm, reflective, procedural account of the alcohol addiction that comes close to killing him.”
Roy Wilkinson, Caught By The River
“This addiction memoir is as compelling as it is poetic… Doran weaves a story of deeply observed and brilliantly conveyed self-doubting reflection.”
Martin James, Times Higher Education
“Jolly Lad is an addiction memoir, but one which deconstructs the macho bullshit, the self-pity and the outright lying that surrounds the literature of addiction… a fucked-up, horrible, brilliant, hilarious tale.”
C D Rose, 3AM Magazine
"Makes Withnail & I look like Little House On The Prairie."
Caitlin Moran
