John Gardner published his famous novel: Grendel back in 1971, at the age of 38. It is the retelling of the Old English poem: "Beowulf" from the point of view of Grendel, the first monster in it.

Gardner himself explained that his Grendel character is modelled on Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom Gardner claimed to have a love-hate relationship: "What happened in Grendel was that I got the idea of presenting the Beowulf monster as Jean-Paul Sartre, and everything that Grendel says Sartre in one mood or another has said."

Be that as it may, I found the book refreshing in its tone and nearly complete lack of morality as we know it. More than that, I relished the poetic style of the work. Even the prose could pass as modern poetry and there are also actual poems sprinkled throughout the text. These poems are often in alliterative verse, a poetic form that I had previously come to know through Tolkien, who made a feature of it. Alliterative verse is the poetic form that the original Beowulf is written in, which is why both Gardner & Tolkien use it. It is an homage to the original and to the ancient Anglo-Saxon culture.

I was inspired to write a similar piece in the same style and in casting around for a subject I realised that I could be Grendel. Like Grendel: I am an outcast, shunned by society, misunderstood by all, under-estimated, unrecognised and unemployed; a lonely wanderer in the night.

Of course I am not a great hulking monster with the strength of 10 men. I am an intellectual monster with brains of 10 men. Instead of killing hapless guards and would-be heroes with violence I slaughter misguided keyboard warriors and mediocre trolls with incisive strokes of my pen and invent excellent works of art and engineering with the unassisted application of my brain.

The original work tells the story of Grendel's life, not everything, just the important bits. And so do I of myself in this reworking. Grendel is bitter at the world and the people; people who could have welcomed him and taken him as a friend. And so too am I at the legion of people who have denied me and mistreated me over the decades. The analogy is complete!

So here it is: A strange and selective autobiography. There is much of my life that is not in this tale of course. I have lived 63 years at the time of writing and experienced much. It makes no sense to try put everything in. This is a highly specific picture of my life, dealing mainly with my intellectual formation, my career and my work. It is not a complete picture of my soul but everything that I have mentioned in this work is nonetheless true.

I have included a poem in each chapter. Some of these are in alliterative verse and some are not. Some are the text of songs that I have written. I experimented with the alliterative form which calls for the first 3 stressed words in each line to start with the same consonant but leaving the 4th stressed word with a different starter. I tried making the odd word out the 1st, 2nd and 3rd to see what effect it would have. I also tried making ALL the stressed words alliterate. In some cases I even had 5 alliterations in one line!

I am still finding my feet with this form and have not yet formed a clear opinion as to how important such matters are. I suspect that the more one becomes used to its strange rhythm the more these things become important but for the untrained modern reader I doubt it makes any difference...