What Are You Reading?

I'm always fascinated by what others are reading.

Right now I've just read or am reading Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal; Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge; Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of DH Lawrence by Geoff Dyer; Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities; and John Gray's Straw Dogs — an incredible, infuriating, outlook-changing book which will make all your ideas about religion and philosophy, science and 'progress', history and morality, humanism and anthropocentrism fall about your ears like a house of cards. It's essential, provocative reading, with the unmistakeable yet disconcerting ring of truth.

What are you reading at the moment?

On Books And Reading

It's true that we're all only ever passing through this world, but part of being alive is that magical process of making it our own. ROB COWEN Common Ground

I love books, but I'm not precious about them. Although books seem to collect around me, I don't consciously collect them. Books pass through my library and life like people: fascinating certainly, often memorable, even life-changing — but one moves on to the next thing. I lend books, borrow books, sell books, give books, am given books, chuck books, even lose them. I have few fine editions with polished spines. Books on my shelves are there to be read, not to impress or gather dust. No doubt this cavalier but rather liberating attitude comes from my previous career in publishing sales. I used to get scores of free books by post every week for many years. I really didn't know what to do with them. Some I sold or gave away. Others I kept, thinking I would read them later — but I hardly ever did. I had far too many books of my own choosing to read!

At some stages of my life I've read omnivorously. At other times I've not read much at all. During my recent trek along the Via Francigena I packed only a guide book. But, of course, I read lots of other things along the way: shop signs, marker posts, graffiti, newspaper headlines, snatches of magazine articles, random fragments from the Bible in churches, words of nonsense and wisdom in pilgrim visitors' books.

At the moment I'm going through a huge bibliomaniac phase. I'm reading library books rather than buying books. I tend to read books in different ways and at different speeds, depending on the form, the content, the style, the density, the difficulty. I've no problem reading some books in a day and others in a year. War and Peace, In Search of Lost Time and The Alexandria Quartet still lie unfinished on my shelves, though I love these novels more than I can say. I also have no problem reading some books twice, some poems countless times and some texts not at all. Life's too short to feel you have to read certain books just because you think you ought to or because others have praised them.

Having said this, I'm lucky in that I do seem to have a wide taste in subject and styles, and, strangely, this compass is getting wider the older I get (you might think this would be the reverse). I don't read books simply for 'escape' or 'entertainment', though I realise that most people do (I hasten to add that I've nothing against this, naturally, and am in no way an intellectual snob). I read to be moved, enlightened, educated, inspired, transformed. Although I've travelled quite a bit, books take me much further than my feet will ever take me. Books really do enlarge and stimulate the mind, and provide the hope, beauty, joy and consolation so necessary for us all.

As examples, let me take two library books I've just finished with. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a debut novel by Jon McGregor, which was first published on 2002. I remember the sparkling reviews at the time. But after reading the first few pages, and then skimming through it, I really could not bear it. He writes of ordinary life in an ordinary street in an ordinary town. But it's hard to write interestingly about everyday life and, for me, he doesn't quite achieve it. I also could not stomach the pseudo-Beat or Whitmanesque style of the opening paragraphs:

And all these things sing constant, the machines and the sirens, the cars blurting hey and rumbling all headlong, the hoots and the shouts and the hums and the crackles, all come together and rouse like a choir, sinking and rising with the turn of the wind, the counter and solo, the harmony humming expecting more voices . . . 

I found this too general, too contrived, too artificial. I prefer something more specific and gutsy. But that's just me — one's taste is so personal. Many people really did love this novel.

Turning now to Rob Cowen's Common Ground, I came across this book serendipitously in a local library. I'd never heard of it before. It came out last year and focuses on a small triangle of edge-land — borderland between town and country — in Bilton, a suburb of Harrogate. I read it quite slowly — you are forced to, as the text can be densely textured (though not difficult) and startlingly, dazzlingly metaphorical. It's staggering, thrilling writing about the symbiotic relationship between man and wild animal. Cowen manages to convey both the crude blandness of life — with its sewage works, factories, chip shops and traffic — and the magic of nature in this ordinary yet extraordinary corner of England. The mundane and the mystical coexist side by side, and he creates something truly wonderful out of this apparent dichotomy. Cowen is without doubt one of our best current writers on landscape, on a par with Roger Deakin, Richard Mabey and Robert MacFarlane.

In this passage from his book Cowen writes about the brief life of the mayfly:

Time is of the essence and yet there is no sense of time. Not as we know it. No fear of the coming, inevitable unknown; these are prehistoric creatures of the present, 300 years in the making. An order older than dinosaurs. Time to them is in the frequencies of the surrounding birdsong, the fluttering of wings, the sun moving through the foliage, the colours that move across their compound eyes, the vibrations that spill down from a passing heron's croak. Light spills down too, a hot afternoon light that fractures the wood, falling in shards between trees and water. The infinite motion of the river runs in one direction; the endless flux of sky meeting wood in another, and into this strange dimension, as though an irresistible force possesses them, the spinners* rise on stained-glass wings, like angels.

And here he considers the importance of the countless, tiny, overlooked miracles to be found in the the natural and not-so-natural world: 

These long days. These late-summer days, immense and golden. It's Tuesday. I walk up the lane at lunchtime troubled by the thought that I may have been lax in my own recordings of this place. The microscopic details of the here and now seem to possess an inexpressible value that I'm worried I've overlooked. I wish I'd kept more rigorous data. More snapshots. The changes in a single leaf in a single location from day to day.The biodegradation of a discarded fag butt on the stone track. The minute-by-minute movement of a single bird through the wood. Maybe these are the things of true importance.  

* 'Spinner' is a name for the adult form (imago) of a mayfly.        

The River Of Words (4): Krishnamurti

I must have been around twenty years old when I discovered Krishnamurti and experienced one of those literary-spiritual shocks which are so transformative and life-changing. Here was a sensible, practical, calming and soul-nourishing philosophy that seemed to give a solution to all those religious, political, social and family issues I was struggling with at the time — though Krishnamurti himself would have rejected any notion of promoting a 'philosophy', just as he disowned any role as all-knowing sage or disciple-seeking guru. His teaching — gentle, simple, loving and humane — was centred on unity, wholeness and self-reliance. It helped you free yourself from the constricting bonds of ideology and received opinion, from the tyranny of both mind and body. Based on Eastern thought, his ideas were truly revolutionary in the West — but this was a peaceful revolution, a revolution of one's complete comprehension of and attitude to the world and how one lives in it. It is difficult to quote adequately from Krishnamurti without quoting whole pieces, as he is not given to attention-grabbing soundbites and hollow aphorisms (good, I say). However, in The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader he talks a lot about meditation, and these extracts are taken from the first few pages:

Meditation is not an escape from the world; it is not an isolating, self-enclosing activity, but rather the comprehension of the world and its ways. The world has little to offer apart from food, clothes and shelter, and pleasure with its great sorrows.

Meditation is wandering away from this world; one has to be a total outsider. Then the world has a meaning, and the beauty of the heavens and the earth is constant. Then love is not pleasure. From this all action begins that is not the outcome of tension, contradiction, the search for self-fulfilment or the conceit of power.

What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but rather the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable. Through negation there is the positive state. Merely to gather, or to live in, experience, denies the purity of meditation. Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. The mind can never be made innocent through experience. It is the negation of experience that brings about that positive state of innocency which cannot be cultivated by thought. Thought is never innocent. Meditation is the ending of thought, not by the meditator, for the meditator is the meditation. If there is no meditation, then you are like a bind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour.

Wander by the seashore and let this meditative quality come upon you. If it does, don't pursue it. What you pursue will be the memory of what it was — and what was is the death of what is. Or when you wander among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and to the ending of it. Meditation is the root, the plant, the flower and the fruit. It is words that divide the fruit, the flower, the plant and the root. In this separation action does not bring about goodness: virtue is the total perception.

Despite all the Oshos and Tolles and Kabat-Zinns, and the many other enlightened, spiritual, self-help facilitators of the world, I always come back to Krishnamurti in the end; for me, he said it the first and the best, the most humbly and the most beautifully. There is so much contained in the above few paragraphs; they alone could form the basis of a meditation which might last a hundred years.

Meditation is the root, the plant, the flower and the fruit. It is words that divide the fruit, the flower, the plant and the root. In this separation action does not bring about goodness: virtue is the total perception . . .

The River Of Words (3): The Lost Art Of Hitchhiking

Where was I going? What was I doing? I'd soon find out. JACK KEROUAC On The Road

You rarely see hitchhikers any more, but back in the 1960s and 70s it was much more common. To get around I hitchhiked regularly from the age of seventeen until well into my twenties. Few young people owned their own car in those days, and trains, even buses, were normally outside your budget, unless your parents had coughed up the fare in an untypically generous mood. Besides, I liked hitchhiking. I thought it was a pretty cool thing to do. I liked the freedom and the unpredictability of it. I liked its air of unconventionality and whiff of danger. I liked pretending I was some kind of outlaw on the edge of society. And I liked the intoxicating romance of the road.

My bible was The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe by Ken Welsh, which I stuffed into my rucksack along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Michael Horovitz's Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain. (These last two books I have still, but sadly Ken Welsh fell apart on an autobahn slipway near Düsseldorf.) Ken was full of bright and breezy comments . . .

Hitch-hiking is a game of chance. In this world where we expect things to run on time or to be in a certain place by three o'clock, it is a refreshing experience. Just because the ninth car doesn't stop doesn't mean the tenth will; nor the hundredth, nor the thousandth. But you'll get there.

 . . . and sensible advice . . . 

Look keen and friendly and try to smile at each vehicle, even when they pass by at high speed. The key is to look like you really want to get somewhere. While you might get a lift lying in the grass by the roadside, nonchalantly waving a thumb in the air while swigging from a bottle of French red wine, frankly, it's unlikely.

Occasionally I hitched with a companion, but mostly I travelled alone. One of my best trips was a one-day, two-lift journey from Frankfurt to Paris — first in a smart Mercedes, then in a beat-up old van driven by two French hippies, who picked up every hitchhiker en route. My worst trip was a scary but exhilarating ride with a couple who were stoned out of their minds. I did eventually get them to slow down and stop, whereupon I almost fell out of the car with relief.

When I was seventeen I hitchhiked to the South of France with a friend called Nick. The photos below tell some of the story . . . 

The pic top left shows an overnight camp (note the improvised fireplace! — not bad, huh?) on a rough patch of land above the Roman town of Vienne (which lies just south of Lyon). Continuing clockwise, that's me with the hat, the long hair and the naked chest (gosh, was I really that thin?) next to a makeshift table we'd constructed, and there I am again with Louie, the owner of the field and a mobile knife grinder by trade. He gave us a lift down to Orange in his camionette, from where we hiked to Tarascon and camped by the river Rhône. Next we have Nick making roll-ups next to our tent, and then you can see the two rather lovely French girls we were pursuing — trying to escape, not from us I hasten to add, but from the Camargue bulls which were terrorising the streets during a traditional bull running festival. The last shot is of Nick and I saying goodbye; we both went our separate ways back to Britain. 

 

I was surprised, as always, at how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility. JACK KEROUAC On the Road

The River Of Words (2): Fons Et Origo

I have loved poetry from an early age — partly, I think, because it was one of my mother's passions. I clearly remember many of the poems of which she was fond: Robert Browning's Home Thoughts, from Abroad, Thomas Hood's I Remember, I Remember, Rudyard Kipling's If, Rupert Brooke's The Soldier and The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, all of John Betjeman. Her taste was nostalgic and traditional, typical of a generation which grew up during the war and the post-war years of austerity, and which looked back romantically at the perceived stability of the past: a colonial England where everyone knew their place, an idyllic, semi-mythical England of cricket matches, country churchyards and village greens. She lived first in London, then in Doncaster — both big railway centres (her father was a draughtsman for the LNER — indeed, he helped design the coaches for the famous locomotive, The Flying Scotsman). An only child, her heart lay, not in the smoky town or city, but in rural Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, where her cousins lived. As a young woman, she joined the Searchlight Regiment; then, after the war, worked in a bank, cared for her mother who had breast cancer, and met and married my father, becoming a partner in his milling business. But I digress.

Where was I? Ah, yes — books, books . . . Somehow the memories of books become entwined with all sorts of other memories: memories of childhood, of school, of holidays, of adolescence. As I've related before on this blog, my mother used to keep diaries and commonplace books, and folders full of poems, aphorisms and other quotations she'd written out in a neat hand. Her character was quite serene and philosophical — and she had a quiet sense of humour too. Recently I found this, which she'd copied from The Dalesman magazine (my family was steeped in religion, agriculture and country living):

A farmer knocked at the pearly gate,

His face was scarred and old.

He stood before the man of fate

For admission to the fold.

'What have you done' St Peter asked

'To gain admission here?'

'I've been a farmer, sir', he said

'For many and many a year.'

The pearly gate swung open wide

As St Peter touched the bell.

'Come in' he said, 'and choose your harp,

You've had your taste of hell!'

I also came across this wry piece by Spike Milligan:

The Dog Lovers

So they bought you

And kept you in a 

Very good home

Central heating

TV

A deep freeze

A very good home.

No one to take you

For that lovely long run —

But otherwise

A very good home.

They fed you Pal and Chum

But not that lovely long run

Until, mad with energy and boredom,

You escaped — and ran and ran and ran

Under a car.

Today they will cry for you —

Tomorrow they will buy another dog.

In my mind I can hear my mother reading these out loud as though it were yesterday.

My mother, Joan, as a young woman.

The River Of Words (1): Childhood

Peter Rabbit

I love pictures and paintings, I'm seduced by film, I couldn't live without music; yet I suppose it's the power and beauty of the word, in poetry and prose, that excites and moves me the most. I'm lucky to have been born into a bookish household — well, on my mother's side at least. My father was a much more workaday and practical man. But both my parents were keen on reading to me, encouraging me to read and providing me with books. As a young child, there were always books to look forward to as birthday gifts and Christmas stocking (or pillow case) items.

I remember going with my mother to the local public library, which she visited religiously on Saturday mornings. She also had a big collection of her own books, which were shelved in utilitarian 1950s-style bookcases (one older, more elegant bookcase had posh, hinged glass doors), some of which she'd inherited from her father, who was clever and literate: Shakespeare and Dickens, Bunyan and Kipling (Puck of Pook's Hill and Just So Stories were her favourites), all kinds of poets including Browning, Masefield and Longfellow, Bible commentaries, thrillers by Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes, a Brit-centric encyclopaedia from between the wars called The Book of Knowledge, and two volumes of National Gallery reproductions (in black and white!) which, at a certain age, I scoured furtively for naked nymphs and alabaster-breasted goddesses.

I think the books we read and had read to us as children are amongst the most important and influential of our lives; no book read in our adult years ever seems to produce quite the same magical thrill as those early 'boxes of delights'. After Noddy and Big Ears I made friends with Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, and before long I was following the adventures of Biggles, The Famous Five, and Swallows and Amazons. And every week I eagerly awaited my comic fix — Playhour, then Eagle, then Look and Learn.

Some children's authors I didn't fully appreciate until much older — Kenneth Grahame and Lewis Carroll, for instance. I recall the dizzy delight of joining the adult library as a teenager and discovering murky histories of fenland Lincolnshire (my home county) — full of eel catchers, deep drainage channels and infanticides — and reading George Orwell for the first time. Soon, in my late teens, the floodgates opened, and I found myself swimming in the turbulent, exhilarating and sexy river of real, grown-up world literature — encountering Lawrence and Woolf, Kafka and Hesse, Camus and Sartre, Kerouac and Vonnegut, and a host of other literary guides and enchanters.