The Boy in the Yellow Dress by Victor Marsh: book review

The Boy in theYellow Dress (2014) is the autobiography of the author, actor, lecturer, and TV producer Victor Marsh (1945-). It is divided into five sections: prelude, exile, return, hometown blues, and coda.

Born in Perth, Western Australia, Marsh begins his memoir with a strong recollection of wearing his mother’s silky yellow dress, and finding “this lovely thing” later burned to ashes. He writes of his student days and his interest in post-surrealism and French playwright, actor, and theatre director, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Acting “provides its own insecurities but, occasionally, playing a role gives me the chance to try on confidence for size.” His brother David, older by three years, dies at the age of 26 of a rejected kidney transplant. The birth of Victor’s baby, whom he names David, is an acknowledgment to his brother.

Marsh openly discusses his thoughts about his own sexuality, especially as it relates to religion. From 1973 he takes on a frugal, celebate and itinerant life in a Zen Buddhist ashram, the Divine Light Mission, traveling around the world “with no fixed base” as an instructor. “Lifestyles come and go. The need for peace is constant,” he writes. This ten-year period is the most detailed part of the book. Marsh compares his following of a living master with an epicure seeking not the best restaurant but the best chef. But there are advantages and disadvantages in this – which he questions; does it take away power and what does one actually learn from the practice of meditation.

In the chapter “reflection” the parable about the gift of a cow to a fishing village is beautifully told. There are also interesting phrases from his learnings, such as “a rolling saint gathers no attachments” – “wondering is wandering” – and “egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self.” Another interesting chapter is “the wobble factor” where he discusses his understanding of repression, attraction, and detachment.

In 1983, after suffering hometown blues, he resigns from the monastic life he led from 27 to 37 years of age. Now at 38, he has returned home, but he has “no car, no phone, no credit card, no knife, no fork, no spoon; no career history that any employer can relate to.” He does get work briefly – as a TV producer with the family music show Young Talent Time – which has already been running for 15 years, producing artists such as Tina Arena and Dannii Minogue. He moves onto the Don Lane late-night talk show production crew and Beyond 2000, the science and technology show, as the Los Angeles coordinator.

He concludes with his father’s death at nearly 82 years of age. After Frank’s death, Marsh learns the truth about his father’s life – and it is through these revelations that he not only understands his father, but also himself.

As Marsh says, “this book has been about the original dis-location and the odyssey of return.” But it is more. It is a not only a detailed account of his journey with spirituality, it is a candid, open-hearted, open-minded “unpacking” of the different factors affecting his thinking, and the extent to which it does so is rare in an autobiography.