Jarvis Cocker is the leader and singer of Pulp, an English band formed in 1978. The book begins with Cocker’s desire to tidy up an attic full of bric-a-brac that he has accumulated over the years. This, in fact, serves as a pretext for constructing, object by object, what looks like a first biography and a glimpse into the birth of his creativity. A notebook in which the name of his future band appears for the first time, a pot of Marmite with a metal lid, a white plastic Polo sweets dispenser, a polycotton Gold Star shirt. Quite a few objects that remind me of my childhood. By the end of the book, it’s 1988 and Pulp still has many years to go. Reading the autobiography of a pop star? I would never have chosen this book, but it was really fun, easy to read and well presented with photos and colour pages. Very entertaining. I’m glad I met Jarvis Cocker and his band.
“We tell ourselves stories based on evidence we glean from the world. We arrange that information in what appears to be a logical order & it becomes a narrative we believe in. It becomes The Truth. These truths can endure for years & years. Often for a whole lifetime. But, every now & then, something happens to make us reconsider them.”
