Paul McDonald (born 1961 in Walsall) is a British academic, comic novelist, and poet.Literary Heritage West Midlands Author Unnamed, page entry 2002. He teaches English and American Literature at the University of Wolverhampton, where he also runs the Creative and Professional Writing Programme.
He left school at 16 and began work as a saddlemaker, an occupation that provides the backdrop for his first novel, Surviving Sting (2001).Rachel Taylor, "Review of Surviving Sting", FictionNet, 2001. After a period studying with the Open University, McDonald entered full-time education at Birmingham Polytechnic, where he began writing fiction, initially producing stories for the women's romance market under a female pseudonym.Richard Williamson, "The Perils of Love in the Raunchy, Rude, Violent, Badlands of Walsall", The Sunday Mercury, 7 October 2001. He later won a scholarship to research a PhD, and in 1994 took an academic post teaching American literature at the University of Wolverhampton.
His second novel, Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004) is a comic mystery satirising the Midlands town of Walsall,Anita Sethi, "Escape from Walsall", The Times Literary Supplement, 21 May 2004 (19–20)."Melvyn Bragg's Travels in Written Britain: The Midlands", The Telegraph, 12 July 2007.Jodie Hamilton, "Review of Kiss Me Softly Amy Turtle", Ready Steady Book, 12 April 2005. while his third, Do I Love You? (2008), takes Northern Soul as its theme.Toby Clements, "Saving the Hapless Male", The Telegraph, 20 September 2008.Cahir O'Doherty, "Do I Love You: Paul McDonald", Irish Central, March 7th, 2010. His poetry began appearing in the early 1990s and embraces a range of themes and styles. Again humour is a feature, as is surrealism, but he also writes serious love poetry, and verse about art and travel. His most recent collections are Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007) and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012).Caroline Clark, "Catch a Falling Tortoise", gwales.com 7 September 2007. McDonald's poetry has won several prizes, including the 2012 John Clare Prize."Appointments", Times Higher Education Supplement, 4 October 2012. His academic writing includes books on Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, the fiction of The Black Country, and humour.Chris Osborne, "From Saddles to Chuckles", BBC Black Country Website, January 2008.Jonathan Williams, "Of Roth and Walsall", The Student Times, 3 November 2008
As a humour specialist, McDonald has made several TV appearances, including on BBC Breakfast and The One Show, and he is credited with identifying the oldest joke in the world.Stephen Adams, "The World's Oldest Joke Revealed by University Research", The Telegraph. 31 July 2008.John Joseph, "World's Oldest Joke Traced Back to 1900 BC", Reuters Website, 31 July 2008."Flatulence joke is world's oldest", BBC News Website Friday, 1 August 2008. He discusses the latter, and some of the ideas contained in his book The Philosophy of Humour with Michael Grade in the BBC documentary Michael Grade & The World's Oldest Joke.Michael Grade & The World's Oldest Joke, broadcast 6 March 2013 (BBC Four).
Bibliography
Poetry The Right Suggestion (1999) Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007) An Artist Goes Bananas (2012) Rimbaud's Hair (2017)
Novels Surviving Sting (2001) Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004) Do I Love You? (2008)
Criticism
Fiction from the Furnace (2002) Students Guide to Philip Roth (2003) Laughing at the Darkness (2011) Reading Catch-22 (2012) Reading Toni Morrison's Beloved (2013) Storytelling (2014) Philip Roth Through the Lens of Kepesh (2016) The Enigmas of Confinement (2018) Lydia Davis: A Study (2019) Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020)
Philosophy The Philosophy of Humour (2013)
As editor Loffing Matters (2006) The Tipping Point (2012)
References
External links Publisher's Website (fiction) Publisher's Website (poetry) University of Wolverhampton Staff Page An Independent on Sunday article in which Paul McDonald discusses humour A Birmingham Post article in which Paul McDonald gives advice on how to write humour.