A colleague told me that she had a book confiscated by another colleague because he felt that what she was reading was morally corrupting and absolute rubbish.
As she was reading Jeremy Clarkson one does feel that such Draconian literary censorship is at least partially justified, but I have spent most of my life trying to find ways to implement my personal motto of “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam.” This is a literal Latin translation of “Anything is better than nothing.”
At this point I await an arch e-mail from Stewart who, with perfectly chosen ironic condescension will point out that the Latin is obviously illiterate, grotesquely barbaric and meaningless. Even I can see that the repetition of ‘quam’ three times is visually inelegant, so there must be another way of saying it.
So, the “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” approach would aver that reading Clarkson is much to be preferred to not reading at all. I know that there is a literary snobbery that claims that reading books is a higher creative experience than, say, reading a film It so happens that I am quite comfortable with that as most of my professional life and leisure time has been taken up with The Book in whatever guise it presents itself.
The ‘guise’ ranges from those intimidating works of world importance which have introductions longer than the text they introduce to those books whose essential cheapness in thought as well as production is reflected not only in the gritty tactile woodchip on which they are printed but also in the lurid, shocking cover images which bear no relation to the content.
I still think that my approach when I was in school was the ‘soundest’ when it came to reading. I used to wander around with three books. The first was a copy of a novel by Agatha Christie or P G Wodehouse; the second was a (preferably) thin book from the Penguin Modern Classics series, and the third was a ‘real’ Classic.
The Agatha Christie or Wodehouse was for sheer pleasure and self indulgence and was therefore carefully hidden from public view so that any pretensions to intellectual respectability could be maintained.
The Penguin Modern Classic book was chosen for its front cover – usually a brilliantly chosen modern painting – and for the kudos that reading modern (and therefore difficult) novels could bring. My first brushes with Jean Genet, Boris Vian, Jean Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Alain Fournier, Collette, Orwell, Zamyatin, Karp, Mann, all came from this excellent series. The kudos could only be extracted from the casual view of teachers because they were the only ones who knew anything about what you were reading.
The ‘real’ Classics were the ones which got you instant credit because even if people hadn’t read them they had heard of them and knew that they ought to have read them. Penguin again was my guide and they had The English Library which included people like Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Fielding, Trollope, Walpole and Shelley (Mrs) and all the poets. There was also the World Classics series which had Tolstoy, Dante, Chaucer and their august like.
So, in my view to restrict oneself to one type of ‘improving’ literature is a ridiculous form of pleasure denying philistianism. When you want to lose yourself in the elegantly nasty witticisms of Clovis as written by Saki, or marvel at the inhuman ingenuity of Jeeves or read paper thin characters mouth their way through intriguing murder mysteries – you are probably not in the mood for Proust or Pushkin. Or indeed vice versa.
The more you read, the more you discover that some Classics (by no means all!) have that designation because they are jolly good reads. In the same way some books which are dismissed by the cognoscenti as unworthy of anything more than a half glace can turn out to be fascinating.
And I for one fail to find anything unpleasant in self indulgence.
Within certain wide limits. As defined by me.
I did my marking yesterday, and with that work orientated credit I don’t really have to justify devouring ‘Was it Murder?’ by James Hilton (the author of ‘Lost Horizons’) as if it were a guilty pleasure, like a cream cake.
Anyway given the general level of vocabulary the novel contained, the odd Latin quotation, passing references to a shared general knowledge which is anything but common, fair characterization, firm structure and a reasonably challenging plot the book qualifies to join the ‘safe pair of hands’ designation and therefore certainly not be deemed a waste of time.
So, “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” covers my present reading and all other goodies lurking in my e-book reader. With almost 400 volumes (and room for many more) in the device I can relax with the knowledge that there is a text for all moods from the frivolous to the furtive; from the profound to the preposterous and certainly from the essential to the easy read.
As Kipling wrote about the ways of making tribal laws, so also with ways of reading and what you might and should read:
There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.
Turn the page! Any page!
As she was reading Jeremy Clarkson one does feel that such Draconian literary censorship is at least partially justified, but I have spent most of my life trying to find ways to implement my personal motto of “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam.” This is a literal Latin translation of “Anything is better than nothing.”
At this point I await an arch e-mail from Stewart who, with perfectly chosen ironic condescension will point out that the Latin is obviously illiterate, grotesquely barbaric and meaningless. Even I can see that the repetition of ‘quam’ three times is visually inelegant, so there must be another way of saying it.
So, the “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” approach would aver that reading Clarkson is much to be preferred to not reading at all. I know that there is a literary snobbery that claims that reading books is a higher creative experience than, say, reading a film It so happens that I am quite comfortable with that as most of my professional life and leisure time has been taken up with The Book in whatever guise it presents itself.
The ‘guise’ ranges from those intimidating works of world importance which have introductions longer than the text they introduce to those books whose essential cheapness in thought as well as production is reflected not only in the gritty tactile woodchip on which they are printed but also in the lurid, shocking cover images which bear no relation to the content.
I still think that my approach when I was in school was the ‘soundest’ when it came to reading. I used to wander around with three books. The first was a copy of a novel by Agatha Christie or P G Wodehouse; the second was a (preferably) thin book from the Penguin Modern Classics series, and the third was a ‘real’ Classic.
The Agatha Christie or Wodehouse was for sheer pleasure and self indulgence and was therefore carefully hidden from public view so that any pretensions to intellectual respectability could be maintained.
The Penguin Modern Classic book was chosen for its front cover – usually a brilliantly chosen modern painting – and for the kudos that reading modern (and therefore difficult) novels could bring. My first brushes with Jean Genet, Boris Vian, Jean Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Alain Fournier, Collette, Orwell, Zamyatin, Karp, Mann, all came from this excellent series. The kudos could only be extracted from the casual view of teachers because they were the only ones who knew anything about what you were reading.
The ‘real’ Classics were the ones which got you instant credit because even if people hadn’t read them they had heard of them and knew that they ought to have read them. Penguin again was my guide and they had The English Library which included people like Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Fielding, Trollope, Walpole and Shelley (Mrs) and all the poets. There was also the World Classics series which had Tolstoy, Dante, Chaucer and their august like.
So, in my view to restrict oneself to one type of ‘improving’ literature is a ridiculous form of pleasure denying philistianism. When you want to lose yourself in the elegantly nasty witticisms of Clovis as written by Saki, or marvel at the inhuman ingenuity of Jeeves or read paper thin characters mouth their way through intriguing murder mysteries – you are probably not in the mood for Proust or Pushkin. Or indeed vice versa.
The more you read, the more you discover that some Classics (by no means all!) have that designation because they are jolly good reads. In the same way some books which are dismissed by the cognoscenti as unworthy of anything more than a half glace can turn out to be fascinating.
And I for one fail to find anything unpleasant in self indulgence.
Within certain wide limits. As defined by me.
I did my marking yesterday, and with that work orientated credit I don’t really have to justify devouring ‘Was it Murder?’ by James Hilton (the author of ‘Lost Horizons’) as if it were a guilty pleasure, like a cream cake.
Anyway given the general level of vocabulary the novel contained, the odd Latin quotation, passing references to a shared general knowledge which is anything but common, fair characterization, firm structure and a reasonably challenging plot the book qualifies to join the ‘safe pair of hands’ designation and therefore certainly not be deemed a waste of time.
So, “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” covers my present reading and all other goodies lurking in my e-book reader. With almost 400 volumes (and room for many more) in the device I can relax with the knowledge that there is a text for all moods from the frivolous to the furtive; from the profound to the preposterous and certainly from the essential to the easy read.
As Kipling wrote about the ways of making tribal laws, so also with ways of reading and what you might and should read:
There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.
Turn the page! Any page!
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