Martin Gordon
Animo Non Astutia|“By Bravery Not Deceit”
Read a sample from my autobiography “No Love Here”.
"We don't publish fiction" a publisher told Martin Gordon, after reading a synopsis of "No Love Here". It has been said that 'truth is stranger than fiction'. This remarkable book strongly supports that theory.
Order Your Copy NOW!
Quote of the Week
'The lion sleeps- rest in peace, Cesar.' Words attached to Sir Rod Stewart's wreath for Billy McNeill.
The Book
When I first began to put down on paper the events of my life, there was no thought in my mind of it being published. I saw it as being a therapeutic process whereby, I would empty myself of much frustration and anger that had built up over the years. But as the writing proceeded, and a few tears were shed, it occurred to me that some people just might like to read of my journey.
“The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction”.
The problem I faced was one common to all writers of autobiography: what to put in and what to leave out. On the advice of a distinguished professor of English at Queen’s University, Belfast, I have omitted certain material that she considered would bore the average reader because of its repetitiveness; even though these incidents on my journey were of immense importance to me.
I think, for example of the German printer who claimed that he had not been paid by the distributors on my behalf, yet sent me a bottle of expensive champagne for Christmas.
John Steinbeck, in his novel, Cannery Row, summed up my life’s experience.
“The things we admire in men, kindness, generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitant of failure in our system. And those traits that we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second”.
But my manuscript would have remained just that had I not joined the Freemasons in Cork and eventually met graphic designer Graham Clarke. It has been he who has taken the project in hand and brought it to the day when the pages I had worked on for so many years, off and on, have become a published book.
Martin Gordon, Cork, Ireland. 21st. June, 2011.