The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange [Paperback]

This is a very curious book. It's essentially an autobiography. Strangely, it tells us next to nothing about the author's family, early childhood etc and even less about his adult life. It's an autobiography of Mark Barrowcliffe's adolescence, growing up in Coventry in the 1970s. I've got to admire the author's pluck: just remembering adolescence is difficult and squirm-inducing; writing about it must have been an ordeal in mortification.

Strangely, though, the book isn't just autobiographical: it's also an unflinching psychological examination of fantasy roleplaying and the teenage culture that grew up around these games in the '70s and '80s. In particular, it explores the impact Dungeons & Dragons had on the author's social and emotional development (a pretty disastrous one, if he's to be believed)... and by implication, a study into nerd-ishness in general.

Fortunately, it's often very funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but that sort of cringing comedy-of-humilation funny that we Brits enjoy. It helps, I guess, if you've had some experience with D&D in your youth, but Barrowcliffe is a lucid writer and makes light work of all the exposition so even outsiders should get the gist (even if they don't quite get the point...).

As an autobiography, then, this is pretty powerful stuff. Barrowcliffe does not spare the lashes in his depiction of '70s Midlands as a dump - riven by class divides, steeped in casual racism and kneejerk fascism, empty and limiting and soulless and bleak. The author is aware of this cultural context and it's intriguing to see this alternative social history (in brief, what happened to Seventies lads who _didn't_ embrace punk) being painted so meticulously. Growing up in this environment did a lot to provoke emotional thuggery, screaming inferiority complexes and narcissistic fantasies and Mark Barrowcliffe is as quick to diagnose them in himself as he is relentless in depicting them in the stunted teenagers he grew up around. At times, the honesty is quite distressing... Although the author doesn't draw explicit conclusions, you can't help feeling grateful that modern children have digital TV and the internet to broaden their lives just a little - and it paints a pretty grim picture of what 11+ testing and selective schooling does to bright but immature young boys who miss out on going to grammar schools.

Of course, among all the gloom there are very touching details for people like me who remember what homes, fashions, attitudes, schools and music were like in the Seventies. I think readers of a different generation will find the book a treat if for no other reason than its vivid portrait of 'Seventies Boyhood' and some of the distinctive life choices that generation had to make.

In fact, the focus on the imaginative world of swords & sorcery is a pretty effective way in to the inner life of an adolescent. The approach reminded me of another autobiographical study of young manhood, C S Lewis' Surprised by Joy, which also focuses on the imagination as the key to understanding our formative experiences.

Which gets me on to Dungeons & Dragons at last. Or rather, fantasy roleplaying in general, because Barrowcliffe touchingly references lots of long lost names... Empire of the Petal Throne... Traveller... Gamma World... we will not forget you... And frankly the author is very very good here at getting under the skin of this strange hobby and probing its impulses and reflexes. Yes, the strangely amateurish art and images, the slightly sado-masochistic imagery and aesthetic, the catechisms of lists, terms, rules and powers to be poured over and learned and shared and invoked. He pretty much nails it. The sense of having entered into a secret world, of initiation. Yes, that's what it was like.

Except, no, it wasn't quite like that. My experience of growing up with dragons and dungeons, for example, simply wasn't as claustrophobic and conflicted. My gaming group quite liked each other and they all had other interests outside of fantasy. I don't think anybody got particularly retarded and I've certainly stayed involved with the hobby, on and off, through the years. But then I grew up in middle class Edinburgh...

That's the only problem with Barrowcliffe's book, which is perhaps too keen to blame fantasy for the author's shortcomings and disappointments; indeed, you get the impression that writing the book has been some sort of exorcism for Mark Barrowcliffe, that some sort of catharsis was reached. He certainly concludes that roleplaying games played a big part in making him into a jerk for much of his life. However, readers might suspect that Mark was doomed to spend a good chunk of his youth and young manhood as a jerk regardless of what hobby he took up; indeed, the smug and vitriolic tone, when not directed at making you laugh, leaves you with an impression that an amount of jerkishness may be an indelible part of the author's personality.

So, a funny book, a nostalgia trip for roleplaying fanatics of a certain age and a very thought-provoking study of adolescence in that grim decade, the 1970s. But the author's rancour perhaps obscures what, for most people who played it, D&D was Really All About.

Mark Barrowcliffe is a former stand up and current writer of comedic fiction; this is what I gleaned from the inlay in his books and tbh this was perfectly enough for me. However, not for Barrowcliffe as `The Elfish Gene' is a book about his teenage years and his obsession with the RPG game `Dungeon and Dragons'. For the most part the book is a sweet, but slightly self indulgent, look at growing up as a dweeb. I myself was no social butterfly and enjoyed the camaraderie in the book. The book is about growing up, but also heavily D&D, to the point where I do not fully understand who the book is aimed at. For people not into the past time there is far too much description of game playing and they will get bored. For fans of D&D they will find an unpleasant book that has a nasty feel.

The problem with the book does not really come about until towards the end when Barrowcliffe mentions his later years - university until becoming a writer. In about 50 pages he manages to undermine the entire book. The moments of selfishness and stupidity that plague his life as a teen are seemingly due to hormones; you think. Turns out that Barrowcliffe is just a unpleasant man who spent university bullying others then leading a life that he dismisses as dull (I'm sure all his former colleagues who look fondly on these years are very happy). He claims to be a better person now, but then rips into others with a venom that left me uncomfortable. As a stand up I must assume his act was to be mean to other people and not self deprecating. Barrowcliffe was a teenager who lived in a fantasy world and had an inflated sense of his own importance; now he is an author who lives in reality, but is still inflated.

This book was fine and dandy until Barrowcliffe's 'Mr Wrong' came out. If, as this book (and especially the jacket) seems to tell us, D&D somehow stunted Barrowcliffe's social skills, or ability to relate to others, it didn't last long, as he ended up bedding 40 women by the time he was 40! They didn't seem to mind his 'elfish gene'. Kind of makes me wish I had tried a bit of D&D now.... if those were the results. So methinks he doth protest too much.

Seriously though, while it's an interesting attempt to portray nerdy youth from a British perspective (most nerd culture is distinctly American) it ultimately fails. Why? Well, throughout the book Barrowcliffe rightly highlights the arrogance, bitterness, one-upmanship and pettiness of a male subculture and hobby. He learns, he grows, he gets beyond it. Then comes the coda. He's trying roleplaying again as a grown-up to see if he remembers what his teenage self got from it. Does he look back wistfully with a wry smile and offer the warmth of matey camradery, advice or sympathy to his fellow roleplayers? Nope: he realises he is superior to all the other middle-aged men there and declares (in a smug way) that he is going home to be with his wife and child, (I have wife! and kids! I have people who care about me! unlike those saddos!) and write some more books (proper publishers and everything!). But not before telling them this. So he still can't resist getting one over on the other role-players, proving he is king, even at this stage of his life.

He's mean, and mocking about role-players in general. Before anyone also accuses me of being 'over defensive' I certainly have no axe to grind when it comes to gaming, as I never enjoyed or understood role-playing.

So, rather than have compassion for the middle-aged nerd, he effectively goes: 'I'm better than you! Yah boo! I win! I win!' thus failing to learn any life lessons at all, and chucking any sense of development or evolution of the story, into a small dustbin. How I loathe him. However I will now use my cleric's staff to call down a healing prayer that turns him into a nicer person. Or something.

A much better autobiography of life as a nerd, which not only has genuine literary merit (it won the Pulitzer) but also genuine compassion for the nerdy male, is Junot Diaz's 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' which I heartily recommend over this tripe. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao