It's only a thought!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig and crumbled goat’s cheese salad, followed by grilled vegetables with herbed oil, concluding with fresh fruit salad: an excellent and astonishingly healthy (for me) lunch in the restaurant of the Maritime Museum in Barcelona with my good friend Suzanne.

     This was the first time that we had seen each other since the summer, and we had the usual lively conversation where the food (excellent though it was) came a distant second to the words with which we surrounded ourselves!

     Out of all the things we talked about, the one which has stuck in my mind was related to a comment that Suzanne made as we bewailed the idiocy of so many people in the world who were simply behaving very badly.  The perennial question of course, is what is to be done to make the situation better?

 

     

 

 

 

 Suzanne’s suggestion was that some sort of international organization like The United Nations Organization should encourage people to come together and produce a list of “Ten books that everyone should read” and then actively encourage their dissemination and consumption.

     My initial reaction was to say, “Thus starts World War III!”  And I could imagine a Lincoln-like figure of authority coming up to Suzanne amid the rubble and wreckage of the World Book Armageddon and saying, “So, you’re the little lady who started this big war!”

 

 

 

     The major religions would probably consider their texts a shoe-in as the most important, so the Christian Bible, The Quran, The Talmud, The Vedas, texts from Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and Sikhism – and you’ve almost used up the ten slots and you’ve left out religious texts from a significant number of other continents – to say nothing of other more fringe religions that would make a good case for the consideration of their ‘sacred’ texts.

     What about considering texts of socio-political importance like Animal Farm and Utopia and The Prince and Leviathan and . . . too many other books to consider.  Or texts about history, or art, or architecture, or music, or philosophy, or . . . so the list goes on.

     I can imagine the discussion.  And I can imagine more easily the discussion descending into rancour and outright violence.  So, just to simplify somewhat the problems surrounding any choice, let’s try and limit things, so that the macro problems of some sort of ‘absolute’ text to go into the World UNO Ten Selected Books, can be considered from a more domestic perspective.

     And that ‘perspective’ suggests another problem. 

     If I think about my personal choice of Ten Texts, then I would start from a background of English Literature and Literature in English.  If I push myself further, then my choice might become a little more pan-European, but my selection will still be limited to fairly conventional Great Literature and Great Thinkers, who are overwhelmingly Western, white, and dead.

     For the sake of attempting something that is within my range, instead of trying to cope with my upbringing, perspective, cultural background, ethnicity, class, etc. I will embrace what I have to work with and think about something that I can achieve and relate things directly to my read experience.

     I will think about the problem of the Global nature suggested by Suzanne’s thought and suggestion, by seeing how something would work by using my experience in the limited area of English Literature, and choose ten books that might fit the bill.

     I find that I am presented not with a range of opportunity, but with a disturbing number of questions about choice.

     Should I be thinking of a History of English Literature approach that starts with something like Beowulf, takes in Chaucer and goes on to Shakespeare as writers providing the first three texts?  But all three pose real problems: Beowulf is written in Early English; Chaucer writes in Middle English and Shakespeare writes in, well, Shakespearean English – none of which is easy to read if you are used to Modern English.

     So, should the choice of Ten Books be not on a strict historical approach but something more like a populist approach, something which more easily invites a reader in, rather than something that demands a certain amount of knowledge and sensitivity to time and place to gain a full understanding of the text?

     But, I feel that there might also be a “no pain, no gain” element inherent in the worth of a significant piece of literature (and I can feel the speech marks forming around many of the words that I have used in the sentence so far) so that if you don’t have to make an effort to understand or appreciate the quality of the writing and the thought behind it, then perhaps it is no more than entertainment, and is not something to be considered Great or even Worthwhile literature.

     So, I will further limit myself to books that are unintimidating, works that can be understood by an educated reader.  I know that ‘understood’ and ‘educated’ are words that demand some sort of definition, and perhaps the constant feeling that more explanation is necessary before a selection can be made is an indication of the difficulty of the whole project.

     But, let me stick to my limits of books in English Literature; reasonably accessible; in some ways of universal significance.

 

     So, my choice of Ten Texts That Everyone Should Read are:

 

1     Animal Farm by George Orwell

2     Songs of Innocence and Experience                 by William Blake

3     Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad            

4    Great Expectations by Charles                           Dickens

5     Emma by Jane Austen

6     Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by               Lewis Carroll

7     Lord of the Flies by William Golding

8     A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

9     Rain and other stories by Somerset                 Maugham

10    Stalky and Co by Rudyard Kipling

 

I’ve just typed them, and I am already having second and third and fourth thoughts, and I think that this is something that I will come back to!

     But Suzanne’s comment has made me think, and, as these are only my first thoughts, perhaps it is only fair that I return to this concept another time!

 

 

 

 

When in doubt, read about it and write!

If anyone cared, which of course they do not, I could list the excuses that would justify my lack of written blog-stuff over the last weeks and months.  That indolence is in the past (he says again) and today, today is the first of the Writing Days that will see me not only complete my daily thoughts, but also see me complete the work on two outstanding books.  I have to admit that I prefer the adjective before the noun in that last part of the previous sentence because it gives me the personal boost that I need to put finger to key and actually get stuff done.

As is so often the case, my return to writing is as a result of reading, and that reading is a result of my hatred of airports.

I am one of the multitude of people for whom travelling is a chore: I like arriving, not going through the process of getting there.  I am well aware that great travel writers (and my late, lamented, and much missed Aunt Betty) are able to make all aspects of their journeys seem fascinating.  Aunt Betty never went on a boring holiday: yes, there were disasters, including one memorable occasion when the family did not have enough money left at the tail end of the holiday to be able to afford a family meal and so my redoubtable Aunt made the executive decision and went out for a meal for one – her!  But for we ordinary folk, the actually process of getting somewhere is almost always tedious and (for all six-foot people) cramped.

The nadir of the travelling experience is everything to do with aircraft.  At least it is if you are travelling low-cost and the person in front of you thinks that the aircraft seats recline and refuses to give up the idea of travelling prone!

It is not all irredeemably bad: one piece of cabin luggage and pre-check-in at least take some of the horror away and, I have discovered, if you are wearing a blue (one has still to be fashion conscious) pressure stocking and are walking with the aid of a Foldystick (god bless them!) and have thrombosis, embolisms and an over working heart, the lady at the check in will look kindly upon you and give you early boarding!  On the return trip from Edinburgh to Barcelona, for the first time in my life, I was the first person on board the plane – having been escorted to the bottom of the steps (where is an air-bridge when you want one?) by not one, but two (count them!) members of staff.  But, for that moment of isolated triumph you have to endure the seemingly endless waiting.

Now, I am not good at waiting.  I would prefer to be doing.  My definition of doing is flexible and doesn’t actually need to be too physically demanding.  Doing, for me, may well be reading.

So, as our little travelling party making the journey from Edinburgh to Barcelona was overwhelmingly composed of people who believed slavish in the necessity for the full (and more) two hours purgatory in the airport before the flight I had steeled myself to an extended period of teeth gnashing frustration – but I had omitted to realize that I would be waiting not in some foreign airport but in a British one.  A British airport where W H Smiths was open for business and had the buy one and get the cheapest half price offer on books.

Toni’s attitude towards my purchasing yet more reading matter that will not fit into a house pleasingly overloaded with books usually means that I limit my impulse buying in the airport, but this time I was positively encouraged to spend because we were in Scotland.

I can still remember my profound disbelief when I first saw a Scottish bank note – soon followed by my plaintive whine about why we in Cardiff did not have our own versions too.  I was very young, still in the days of the large white fivers, when my dad explained that Scotland had its own version of the currency and it was also explained to me that this Scottish money was legal tender in the rest of Britain.  And that was a fact.

In an early example of ‘facts’ not necessarily being generally accepted, I suggest you try and use a Scottish banknote in Cardiff.  On the, admittedly few, occasions that I have been slipped a Scottish note in my change, I have NEVER had the recipient (outside Scotland) accept the ‘foreign’ note with anything other than healthy scepticism or downright rejection.  I was able to play on this attitude to such an extent that Toni was positively urging me to ‘get rid’ of the notes that I still had in any way possible – including the purchase of books!

In what must be a first, Toni actually accompanied me into W H Smiths (!) to aid and abet me in the purchase!

Nowadays, like my Dad, I find myself drifting towards the non-fiction section of the bookshop to get my impulse buys.  I ended up with two books: the first, “Humans” by Tom Philips which had a graphic of an inky left handprint and a subtitle of “A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up” and the second was “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall with a graphic of half of the world filled with words, and a subtitle of “The maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics”.

I have to admit that I bought “Humans” on the strength of thinking I knew the writer, Tom Phillips.  I thought that he was the writer who had produced another Mapp and Lucia novel to add to the all-too-brief sequence written by E F Benson.  He wasn’t.  And I really should have known that someone who could publish a subtitle of such vulgarity could not possible have been comfortable with the style of E F Benson!  I am, however, glad that I made the mistake as I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

For years I looked forward to owning a book with the wonderful title of “Great Planning Disasters” in which the site of the British Library; B.A.R.T.; Concorde and of course The Sydney Opera House were all discussed in loving detail.  The fact that, for example, The British Library and The Sydney Opera House are both excellent entities, the first being an excitingly magical place in which to work and the second being an instantly recognizable, iconic masterpiece do not detract from the absurdly farcical way in which they were created.  In the same way, I look forward to the Olympics, not for the sporting excellence that sometimes appears, but rather for the political, social and financial disasters that so frequently follow the awarding of the questionable honour of staging them and their reality.  For me, the games themselves are something of an anti-climax after the unreal shenanigans leading up to the opening ceremony!

So, my mind set is predetermined to wallow in human cupidity and ineptitude, and “Humans” provides dollops of Man’s (and let’s face it, in the history of global incompetence, the use of the masculine is terribly, and I mean that word literally, appropriate!

For those who might find the language used in this book informal to the point of vulgarity, then I would suggest that the sub-title would have given a fairly clear indication of the attitude of the author and they have only themselves to blame.

I think the book reads like an informed comic novel – the text bounces along and ranges freely through history to find the most glaring examples of what can only be described as f*ukupedness!  For me, the whole book was justified by giving much more information about Thomas Midgley Jr. the “genius engineer, chemist and inventor . . . whose discoveries helped shape the modern world to a remarkable degree” – to find out just how catastrophic his “genius” was.  As the author points out, “He’s in this book because, incredibly, being killed in his bed by his own invention doesn’t even make it into the top two biggest mistakes of his life.”!  And if that little extract doesn’t make you want to find out why and read more then you are a person so far removed from my own way of thinking that I wonder why you are reading this blog in the first place.  Read, and enjoy!

The second book “Prisoners of Geography” (which now I come to think about it sounds like the title of a second musical review at the end of the truly excellent film, “The Producers”) is a more conventionally written book, though it is filled with the personal opinions which, refreshingly, make it into the main historical, social and geographical descriptions in the book.  It is packed with information which is compelling by its sheer obviousness – as soon as you have been told about it!

Reading it reminded me of what turned out to be the first mentioned book in the Bibliography under the General references section: Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” published in 2005.  I read Diamond’s book in a state of continual revelation and “Prisoners of Geography” has a real debt to it – but that does not make “Prisoners of Geography” derivative, it ploughs its own furrow and a compelling one it is too.  Well worth reading.

For those academics among you the most pressing differences are: “Humans” has a brief, chatty section of further reading at the end, while “Prisoners of Geography” has a sectioned bibliography and a full index.  But I must emphasise that both books read themselves and I will be returning to them in the sure and certain knowledge that I will be shocked anew!

My other purchases in Edinburgh comprised some short stories by Ian Rankin (two quid reduced, I couldn’t resist, and the book has been read and already given away as a ‘reader’ for English with an Edinburgh background to Toni’s sister for her edification; catalogues to the Nolde exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, the Rembrandt exhibition in the National Gallery, and the gallery guide to the National Portrait Gallery.  I also bought an old catalogue of watercolours of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, because yes, and gallery guides that I purchased second hand on Amazon together with a Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland volume which, as the contents went on tour in the US of A must have depleted the galleries to an astonishing extent, but must also have made a truly startling exhibition.

Books are heavy, and with only one cabin case I had to be especially winsome and “walking wounded” during my early boarding attempt, to deflect anyone from actually weighing my case.  I had to manfully reject any offers of help just in case they realised by the sheer gravitational pull that I might have been just a smidgeon over the approved weight limit.

All the books are safely home and make a truly satisfying ziggurat of colourful information on the coffee table next to my armchair – and because so many of them are catalogues of paintings I have actually “read” them all as well.  Though, I think that I would aver that actually “reading” a painting takes up a great deal more time that a similar allowance made for text.

One painting stands out, for reasons that I am still working on: Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) The Stoning of Saint Stephen.  Not the beggared version of the painting in Cologne, but rather the “magnificent Edinburgh version, far richer in detail and more complicated in composition” and in particular the extraordinary young man in tip toes in the right hand foreground whose upstretched arms are about to bring a rock on the hapless Stephen’s head.  I also find the dramatically up lit dark haired angel (looking more like a disturbing figure from Degas or Sickett) worthy of note.  To say the least.

I am fascinated by the painting and I am trying to find out more about painter and painting and I think I might write a short monograph on the subject, Watson!

So, plenty to do, plenty to read – as long as the enervating heat keeps off.  Which it doesn’t, so my monograph will be in the realms of fantasy until the weather breaks and I return to my desk rather than the sun lounger!