Mr Keith Fortner (1/7) By The Silver Fox

(1/7), (2/7), (3/7), (4/7), (5/7), (6/7), (7/7).

In assessing the nature and worth of Mr Keith Fortner, it helps to be acquainted with one or two salient facts about his background. This is true of anyone, of course; understanding can rarely come without some awareness of their past experiences and emotional development after all. Even the vast majority of people who tend to exist in a very limited context - the parameters of which are both rigidly-defined and rigidly confining - have undergone telling experiences that have influenced them, have shaped them, and have put them where they are today.

Without these crises in their affairs, people would be little more than lay figures, devoid of personality; lumpen simulacra of the human form that respond to outside stimuli in only the simplest way. When one meets someone, for example, who exhibits undue alarm and horror at the sight of a pale-blue cardigan, one is initially puzzled - surely even the most deeply-held aesthetic convictions wouldn't provoke such symptoms as uncontrollable sweating, a rigor mortis style stiffening of the facial muscles, and an apparent inability to speak for several moments, we think.

The veil of mystery that surrounds such odd carrying-on is usually ripped away however, when we discover that at the age of four, our new friend saw his/her mother drop dead from a massive aneurysm whilst in the Knitwear department of a Littlewoods store. Quite understandable, really, we concede, and leave it at that. And this, as I said earlier, is true for those whose lives have followed even the most conventional courses. Ask anybody, and they could recall dozens of such key instants in their personal histories; watershed moments more or less as commonplace as the one described above. I myself have met approximately seventeen people whose mothers passed away in just such circumstances, and I am reliably informed by those far better-qualified than I to comment on such matters that this is far from being a statistical anomaly.

To get a handle on a cat like Keith, though, it is even more essential to be aware of his back-story. His has been a life of great turbulence and change, and it has left him so transformed from the man he once was that it is hard to believe that the Keith Fortner of today is even of the same species as his happy and successful antecedent. He's come a long way, baby - and all of it downhill. The Fortners were a happy family that lived in one of those "dormitory" towns that - even the most casual observation of any number of dreary and self-serving autobiographies shows you - seem to breed men and women of exceptional talent and ability with monotonous regularity.

Continued...Next Page (2/7)

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