TOO TRUE

Blake Morrison

Granta Paperback Original, #9.99

Blake Morrison is a poet and literary journalist whose memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a raw and tenderly painful account of his relationship with a parent whose life and death from cancer clouded his life and whose shadow covers several pieces in this volume.

Another piece, South Pacific, was prompted by the memory of a family visit to the cinema. After his father's death, Morrison finds a pile of metal cine reels stored with the other stuff his father could not bear to discard. Having seen the ads for places which make videos from old 8mm films, he eventually gives his mother the gift.

''I keep waiting for my father to walk into the picture, young again, alive, and only slowly do I see how stupid I've been, that he's not going to show, that this is a memento of his absence or invisible presence off screen.

''Just as he'd hogged the steering wheel, monopolised the phone, controlled the family finances, so it was he who always held the camera: these were his films, but he didn't appear in them; this was his life, but there's no record of him living it.''

The title phrase his father used to express ''rueful acknowledgement or cheerful assent''. In a wonderfully invigorating introductory essay, he suggests ''that truth wasn't the high point or ultimate goal but a state of compromise: some things were untrue, and others too true; truth lay sensibly in between''.

His father, it seemed, had provided a phrase to explain why certain books were exciting; they were too true. Investigative journalism could also disclose truths too close for comfort, and, exploring the shifting boundaries between fact and fiction, Morrison suggests distinctions have been blurred by our apparent preference for the former and what has been the conventional use of the word ''story''. It has become confused with, and perhaps even superseded by, journalistic imperatives. Columnists refer to the articles they write as ''stories'' and the best journalism borrows devices from traditional fiction. We grow up on stories; the reader's craving to believe and recent commercial exploitation of the non-fiction genre gives contemporary writers a dilemma more acute than that faced by predecessors such as Defoe or Dickens. He speculates that it's more profitable to market a memoir of abuse

than a first novel on the same subject.

Privacy for public consumption is a dangerous route. ''Writers who confess merely in order to make themselves feel better are likely to leave their audiences feeling worse.'' And the art involved, the selectivity and detachment, Morrison argues, is the same for both genres, and both are judged on their narrative skills.

It's a provocative contention, which is enhanced by Morrison at his most personal. These pieces range from introspective memoirs to literary criticism and profile; but the stories that endure are those where he exemplifies his own argument - whether stalking a council scheme for his son's stolen bicycle or meeting a former girlfriend - and where he documents the minutiae of ordinary existence to understand and rise above it.