Hoorah for Maria!
And not just because she's Maria.
Whenever I am feeling like crap or have lost the will to blog
she rides to my rescue with a meme.This one's a book meme, and as I am addicted to books way beyond all reason (my house is merely a vast book repository with a bed squeezed in there somewhere), I will inevitably expand it exponentially and take this post to previously unheralded levels of tedium and pretentiousness.
I may swear from time to time, too.
Just so you know.
Right!
Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin … (Ten credibility points for anyone spotting where that comes from and it's not a book).
1) Books That Changed Your Life.
I've read a lot of great books but as for books that have actually opened my eyes to something and turned my whole life around? Those are a rarer species.
I mean The Bible and The Qur'an are great books and I still read them both but I was brought up on one and the other hardly came as a surprise. As I don't believe in any God or Gods or in any deluded concept of "afterlife" (as if this life weren't draggy enough) they don't really have much influence on me except for their merits as historical and literary texts. They rank alongside the Mahabarata, the Epic of Gilgamesh (great chunks of which have been copied straight into the Old Testament much as a really bad student would steal stuff for homework assignments) and the Gnostic Gospels; fascinating, poetic, beautiful and occasionally unintentionally hilarious but hardly life-changing.
As an outspoken Marxist I would have to cite Book 1 of Karl Marx's "Capital" as a life-changer; in fact a life-definer.
I'll allow criticism of it only from those who have read and absorbed it and are therefore entitled to an opinion.
Any book that takes "The Wealth Of Nations" (I have that, too, but I keep it in the bathroom, where it belongs), shoves the splintered gatepost of righteousness straight up Adam Smith's pimply arse and makes him spin around gets my vote.
People who criticise Marx or The Qur'an or "The Six Bunny-Wunnies And Their Layover In Anderson, Indiana" or indeed any other book without having read it can frankly go fuck themselves.
I've said this so many times but it is crucially important and it bears repeating here: "
Read the source material and make up your own mind. It's what your brain is for. Don't simply believe what somebody else tells you about it." … (least of all, me).
Another biggie in the life-changing stakes was Dostoyevsky's "Crime And Punishment", the book that first started the rabid biblio-fetish which long ago engulfed my life and spat out the sad pedant you see before you.
On my last day of school I cleared out my locker and wandered off into the great wide world thinking "So … That was school. Other than some maths and physics and how to screw girls it's taught me fuck all about life so if I'm going to live it I'd better head to the bookshop and start reading."
On my way home I bought cheery old Fyodor's Bumper Book of Guilt and Responsibility and immediately identified with Raskolnikov's plight.
Quite apart from my own personal issues at the time it taught me that books need not be the joyless exercises in lit crit we had been taught; indeed they could be enormously enjoyable and that the best of them could guide and enrich my life.
These days, every year come October I hit my Dickens and The Major Russians hard. Right through the dark winter months the glorious triumvirate of Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky sustains me as much as food and drink. Rather pretentiously I love to sit in my big wingback chair, reading them by candle-light.
They are not mere stories; they are life and they are truth and they contain far more of both than can be found in the Old Testament and can and should be read at least once a year by everybody on this benighted planet.
Borders now sells ALL of them at two pounds a pop (yes, £2) so you've no excuses. You can work your way up to the fine, tooled leather and Venetian handmade paper editions when you become an addict like me.
On a lighter note I discovered Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" when I was thirteen and carried the damned thing around in my back pocket for years. Appalling tosh as it was, it taught me to enjoy poetry and to enjoy reading aloud (something I'm particularly fond of and good at) and it helped me to the remarkable and life-changing discovery that being mysterious to the point of bafflement can get girls naked (thanks, Bob).
2) Books That You Have Read More Than Once.Most of my books I read over and over. Which is why I don't tend to read disposable "airport" books or "bestsellers" (non-books - life's too short).
This is where we come to the difference between a "book" and a "non-book".
A "non-book" is something from the bestseller lists, churned out for a particular market; a page-turner written to a formula, be it a thriller, a romance, a celebrity or TV tie-in; whatever. No bad thing in themselves, as they keep the publishing industry afloat, yet soul-destroying to read. I try to give them a chance on occasion, but no matter how well crafted the storyline might be they are inevitably written by people with no conception of how to write beautiful prose. I'll happily watch the movie but I usually throw the books down in disgust after a few pages with a cry of "Yes, it's a good story, but learn to write, you ignorant fucker!"
The modern novel doesn't have to be a lazy piece of hackwork but most are and it seems to me that the kind of people who buy bestsellers aren't that interested in reading, just in passing the time.
The last "bestseller" I found readable was Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"; it was an enchanting story but more importantly it was beautifully written. Sadly it was published fifteen years ago. Come on, people. Write me something worth reading!
The very best modern novels are - like Dickens or Tolstoy - true works of art that can be read and enjoyed time after time. You are not merely turning the page to "see what happens next" (for fuck's sake, leave that to Grisham); you are lost in a whole new world.
A "book" is pure joy; something that enhances your life every time you read it. Just because you know Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice and allows himself to be crucified doesn't stop you reading The Gospels (Awww! You spoiled it now!); similarly, knowing the ending of Bleak House (which you certainly won't get from the BBC adaptation - or more accurately, the TV soap loosely based on a few of the characters from Bleak House) takes away not one iota of the pleasure of reading Dickens' prose; that marvellous first section (where most people tend to give up because they have no soul) brilliantly written in such a deliberately dense and obfuscatory manner to conjure and echo the miasmic London fog and the eternally turgid case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. There's a sentence in there that's almost a page long; the most breathtakingly masterful use of the semicolon I have ever found. I love reading that aloud. I can picture old Boz setting aside his quill after writing it, then jiggling his legs up and down under the table and giggling with unalloyed glee at his own incomparable cleverness.
More real "books":
J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher In The Rye";
Jose Saramago, "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis";
Mario Vargas Llosa, "The War Of The End Of The World";
Yukio Mishima, "Spring Snow";
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick";
John Steinbeck: "The Grapes Of Wrath";
George Orwell, "Animal Farm";
Harper Lee, "To Kill A Mockingbird";
all books that everybody should have read and should treasure and each one worth far more than a hundred years worth of throwaway trash Grishams or Cooksons.
As for books that I read every single year: most of these will be (with the exception of the Greek and Roman classics - I always have one of those on the go) non-fiction - Goldsmith, Pepys, Mommsen, Gibbon, Hodgkin, Russell, Descartes, Churchill, plus a bunch of quantum physics stuff that's mostly numbers (each to their own); but as most people seem to read fiction, let's start with my annual re-reading fiction list: Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Dante's "Divine Comedy", Shakespeare's tragedies, Milton's Paradise Lost, Gœthe's Faust, the big Russians, Dickens, the list in the paragraph above and lots more.
Remember that I spend probably seven hours a day reading on the train and in bed, so I don't expect you to keep up that kind of rate yourselves, but if you're going to read, for Pete's sake read something worthwhile.
Every couple of years I'll also try to fit in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books (the first two, anyway) and some Tolkein, just to recapture a little of the wonder of my youth.
Pretentious twat that I am I do confess to a liking for one particular genre of non-book: classic American pulp fiction. Long time blogpals may remember
my old Edward Hopper post and my quoting that marvellous Raymond Chandler line so evocative of Hopper interiors: "A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet."
Chandler is wonderful with "American English" and the master of its use in the modern pulp is surely James Ellroy (if you've seen the movie L.A. Confidential you'll know who I mean); his Pete Bondurant novels especially; his use of dialogue in "The Cold Six Thousand" is as near as pulp fiction gets to true literary art.
3) One Book You Would Want On A Desert Island.Hmm … I suppose one of Ray Mears' survivalist handbooks would be practical, but possibly not a literary orgasm to be enjoyed time and again.
I used to think my original Mrs. Beeton's Household Management would be an excellent choice for a desert island castaway. For starters (under "Colonial Cuisine") she has no qualms about giving instructions as to the best way to slaughter terrapins (be sure to break their legs before boiling them alive to prevent them clambering up in a heap and allowing some to escape - See? You've learned something new today) and how many parakeets per person to put in your pie (three), but she also goes on to explain the duties of butlers, housemaids and kitchen staff. I think that life on my desert island would be made immeasurably richer for knowing the most appropriate form of neatly folded origami linen napkin to use when serving broiled lizards. If I am to be driven mad with the torment of loneliness I want to be sure to use the correct cutlery. A very English insanity.
However, I am a creature of habit and for decades have always carried precisely the same books with me on holidays abroad (don't ask me why; I have no idea).
These are: William Burroughs' "The Place Of Dead Roads", Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities", Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and Swift's "Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First A Surgeon, And Then A Captain Of Several Ships", better known in these unenlightened times as "Gulliver's Travels". I try to add one classic novel by an author from the country I'm visiting, to help understand the culture a little better, and a Langenscheidt dictionary for any local words that I come unstuck on (the Langenscheidts are those lovely little yellow rubber dictionaries that are virtually indestructible - the Germans do compound nouns, blitzkrieg, genocide, denial and yellow rubber books so well - mine are full of hastily scribbled notes jotted down during conversations in marketplaces and bars).
4) Two Books That Made You Laugh.Ah, Douglas Adams, bless him.
The first two Arthur Dent books ("The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" and "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe") are without doubt the funniest and silliest things ever written in any language.
And for light, throwaway "non-book" funnies to read on the train, I confess to having the complete Pratchett hidden away in the third bedroom; not so much books as "episodes" in a very silly comedy series. I think the current running total is thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the little buggers; I'll have to count 'em when I remember.
5) One Book That Made You Cry.Shit, I cry at just about any book or old movie. Kleenex should give me a medal for years of sterling service … okay, so not just for crying.
Right. Guaranteed Dive tearjerkers: Poor old Sidney Carton doing a Jesus in "A Tale Of Two Cities" always leaves me blubbing like a baby. Henchard's grave in "The Mayor Of Casterbridge", ditto. Rose of Sharon's heartbreaking final paragraph in "The Grapes Of Wrath", tritto.
I don't cry at melodrama; for instance Little Nell's fate leaves me shrugging with indifference, but generally at sacrifice and suffering (I'm an Atheist but I cried at the reading of John-19 in church on Good Friday - I still go to the big days for a sermon and a sing-along). Non-fiction, too: Solzhenitsyn's multi-volume "The Gulag Archipelago" leaves me totally wrecked, as do the First World War poets and Primo Levi's accounts of the Holocaust.
6) One Book You Wish You'd Written.I wish I'd written the Harry Potter books; not for any literary reason (though I've not read them so I cannot comment on that) but the idea of having a pile of cash bigger than the world to disburse in whatever contrary fashion I please is not unappealing.
From a literary standpoint it could be any of those above, but I'll choose a different one and go for Saramago's "Histório Do Circo De Lisboa", because it is so unutterably lovely (
in the English translation by the incomparable Giovanni Ponteiro - "The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon" - as well as in the original Portuguese).
7) One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written.Not so much never written as left alone and not fucked with: The New Testament.
Several generations after Jesus' death, the Christian church was still a loose collection of bickering Jewish sects, persecuted by Roman and Jew alike, yet in possession of a large body of eyewitness accounts and commentaries of the life and teachings of Jesus himself.
It was in the last years of Emperor Constantine's life that he decided to cover all his bases with regard to an afterlife and convert to Christianity and what's more, to make it the official Roman State Religion.
To the disparate Christian sect leaders this was too great a prize to refuse, even though it came at a price. And that price was deciding which of the many conflicting accounts - the Gospels - written by Jesus' disciples and friends would constitute the official canon.
Most of the Gospels; notably those accounts of Peter, Mary, Thomas, Philip and Judas himself were rejected, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was what Constantine thought would "sell". If he were to introduce this religion all across the known world he wanted it to be consistent and acceptable to Roman citizens.
The rejected texts were not - unlike Marcion's "unofficial" canon - rejected as heresy, they were simply no longer taught and disappeared into obscurity, only to come to light again in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.
In accordance with my mantra of "read the source material and make up your own mind" I feel that all Christians should have a look at these rejected works, keeping in mind that what we now know as the New Testament was a drastically abridged version of the witness statements of Jesus' friends and followers specifically designed to "sell" to the Roman citizenry.
It's not heresy; it's merely akin to looking at the "extras" on a "special edition" DVD, but it puts a lot of things into much needed perspective.
Oh, and I really wish that good old Mervyn Peake had stopped after the first two Gormenghast books, so perfect in themselves with their glorious use of English and the heartrending tragedy of Steerpike, and not gone mad in his dotage and written the complete abomination of arse-gravy that is Titus Alone.
8) Books That You Are Currently Reading.Right:
On my bedside table (that's "nightstand" for the Colonials):
The Bible (currently reading Daniel);
Virgil's Æneid;
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations;
Maya Angelou: "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings"(as Robyn pointed out to me that it's her birthday this week);
Downstairs, on the coffee table by the reading chair:
The Canterbury Tales;
Volume eight of Pepys' Diaries;
Albert Hourani's "Arabic Thought In The Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939";
Volume eight (1965-1966) of Fantagraphics' glorious twenty-four volume hardback series "The Complete Peanuts".
Beside the computer:
Japanese For College Students: Vol 1.
Basic Kanji: Vol 2.
The Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations;
Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary;
The Oxford Book Of Japanese Grammar;
In my bookbag for train journeys:
Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" in both Japanese and English;
Langenscheidt Japanese Dictionary;
Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
9) One Book That You Have Been Meaning To Read.I love to read books in their original language, for the same reason that subtitled movies are infinitely superior to dubbed.
The classics merely highlight the crappiness of my schoolboy Latin and the virtual non-existence of my Greek; Camõens' "Os Lusiades" and some of Saramago's books I can manage in Portuguese, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is not much of a problem in my strangled Franglais; Dante I struggle pathetically with in mediæval Italian, although I love reading it aloud; "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain" I adore in Anglo Saxon (again to read aloud, stalking around the room, gesticulating wildly; the alliteration gives me a stiffy); Chaucer in Middle English, of course; and Mishima uses such archaic Japanese that he is a real pain in the ass to read, but I hope to improve enough to appreciate him without Mayuko's help.
In English I suppose the fact that I have yet to get round to reading The Great Gatsby would appall any Americans, but I'll get there eventually.
Finally - and closer to home - in blogs we increasingly find criminally unpublished writers of far greater ability than most of the authors staining the "bestseller" lists.
We have some even here in our little community whose works I would proudly display on my shelves if only publishers weren't so blindly obsessed with celebrity "autobiographies" and TV tie-ins and would actually publish them.
At the very heart of Blogville,
Maria writes so perfectly that she regularly has this forty-nine year old man in floods of tears, or indeed laughing fit to bust.
But she does not write fiction; she writes of her life and she writes so well that it often overwhelms me. Blogville's closest thing to Pepys; a perfect diarist.
As well as being a fellow guitar player and an all round cool guy,
Utsav is a poet of quite breathtaking delicacy and beauty and his pieces invariably leave me awed (and extremely jealous of such talent).
And the same goes for painter, political polemicist and poet,
Katherine.
We do, however, have a pair of first class fiction writers among us; Robyn and Lynn.
Lynn writes (as well as a novel and her journalism) gripping and occasionally erotic short stories with all too real heroines.
I first encountered her when she appeared in my comments box with an acute observation. Following her profile link I came across what seemed to be a terrifying suicide note from a woman on the edge.
It turned out I had stumbled upon the first chapter of her novel, "
Under A Train" which she had posted without any indication that it was a work of fiction. Her writing had shaken me pretty badly (how do you reply to someone about to kill themselves?) and - after laughing at my unfounded concern and altering the blog to make it clear that this was an example of her creative writing -
her wonderful stories have ensnared me ever since. Whether it's the feel of paint on canvas or of silk on skin there is a palpable sexual tension to her writing, and her dialogue - especially the underlying suspicion between lovers - is so real (and at times so funny) that it hurts.
In complete contrast, the deceptively gentle slow-burn of
Robyn's writing reminds me of the feeling I got on first reading Richard Russo's "Mohawk" and that tranche of new American writers who, at the end of the last century unleashed "dirty realism" on a helpless world.
In the beautifully written prose of her novella "Mrs. Branch", events of shattering, life-changing enormity tear the small town heroine's life apart yet Robyn writes in exquisite, almost painful detail of the everyday things we need to survive the unstoppable tsunami of devastation about to overwhelm us; of quiet heroine Maryann emerging from denial into a world gone mad, clinging stoically to physical and emotional minutiæ so sharply observed that they catch the edge of your heart and unravel it.
The publishing industry needs a shake-up; it needs to ease up on greedily churning out formulaic crap for short-term profit and to concentrate at least some of its effort on nurturing good new writing. The music industry's collapse gets blamed on "home piracy", yet the real reason is that for the past thirty years they have ceased to invest in talent and instead marketed "product" to an increasingly disillusioned public who inevitably said "enough is enough" and stopped buying.
There is good writing out there; it just isn't getting published.
Thank goodness for the internet.
Just reading through that pretentious pile of twaddle I realise how the books I mention above only just start to scratch the surface of "what you should all go out and read right now", so I may well do a series of posts on one book or one author, to give any "non-book" readers a taster of what they're missing.
You have been warned.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Mikey! Yaaaaay!!!!!
Actually, this is the only pretty building in Lowestoft; the lighthouse I went to photograph when I got distracted by the local beauties in yesterday's post.
This is Ness Point; the most easterly piece of land in the British Isles.
And this is the beach.
So … Tourists. Thinking of coming to the East Anglian Coast this summer?
