To Read or Not....

Are books read or bought?

Allegedly 50,000 copies of Jane Austen are sold a year*. They may be bought, but are they read? If statistics are to be believed, the average household has four books – a Bible, a cookbook, a car or house manual and something else. This may well be different now with electronic book readers. But the point is not so much about people having books but about reading.  I am always amazed when people tell me they ‘never read’, or if they do it is ‘not fiction’. Again, if the statistics are to be believed, on the whole, men and women still reflect stereotypical reading preferences of adventure and romance. However, recently there was a buck in the trend, when women started reading ‘explicit erotic literature’ in their thousands, because they could do so anonymously on electronic book readers.

A real reader, often a solitary creature, will read literally anything. Sitting and holding a book is part of the solitary, personal addiction. This sometimes expensive habit is best fed by libraries, but there are second hand book shops where indescribable experiences of pleasure can take place. For the bibliophile, online secondhand books are a real dilemma and danger, a joy and a betrayal both at the same time. The ubiquitous, anonymous, unfailing online book seller has the book that is ‘wanted’, but at what cost to the usual supplier - the secondhand book shop.

Never was so much owed by so many to so few – the small independent booksellers and secondhand shops who continue their brave fight with passion and love for books and literacy, in the face of philistinism. I must shamefacedly admit that I do not buy new books – I have got to a certain age. But I do want wholeheartedly to support my local shops. Burway Books in Church Stretton http://www.burwaybooks.co.uk/ is a truly great little shop, love of books ooze out of the shelves. Much More Books in Much Wenlock http://www.muchmorebooks.co.uk/  is probably one of the best secondhand book shops in the country. Like all good secondhand book shops there is no snobbery. The owners love and read books too and know what ‘real readers’ want, so there is a Mills and Boon section.

Here is my first suspicion about who are the real readers, if any, of Jane Austen. Mills and Boon the publishers of romance novels and their readers are always looked down upon like the poor relations. I think it is these ‘real readers’ who are responsible for a large part of the 50,000 sales a year of Austen. These avid romance readers also read other classics like the Brontës, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskill etc.

My second suspicion is that people buy books because they think they should read them. This is intellectual ‘improvement’ by association. Years ago I knew someone who always had a worthy tome under their arm and gave the impression of reading them, which made them seem ‘well read’. As a mutual acquaintance pointed out, they had never seen the person in question reading anything, which was pretty much the truth. For non ‘real readers’ there is no guilt attached to buying books and not reading them; books exonerate themselves by being worthy objects to have around the house or be seen with – even more so if they are ‘classics’. The non reader can also claim that the book is in a state of not ‘not read’ just ‘waiting to be read’ – when there is more time – it has been started! A ‘real reader’ knows time to read books is made, or stolen. A ‘real reader’ will give a book a chance, because books have surprises or twists.

A new film or TV series is made of a ‘classic’, the book of the film etc is re-branded with the actors on the cover, and it turns into a impulse purchase. The re-branded ‘classic’ is bought very much like a film magazine, not really for the content but the images. The re-branded book is bought because the person buying it wants to be reminded of the film and associate with it.

One of my favorite books is Vanity Fair – and I do like the idea of Thackeray laughing at me laughing at him – wherever he is. The TV tie-in of Vanity Fair has the dashing Jack Klaff on the cover – what whiskers! Ah! dear reader –

"Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum!" which of us is happy in the world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?"

I truly hope that next years 50,000 copies of Austen are bought ( if they must be) in the independent bookshops…. and some from secondhand book shops

* www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21227207Cached Jane Austen's "one darling child" Pride and Prejudice was published ... that Pride and Prejudice sells up to 50,000 copies each year in the UK.

Future of the Novel and Lists

 Top 100

Someone recently tweeted a reference to a list of the ‘Top 100 Books’ and asked for comments. It was really an attempt to get some sort of discussion going about literature and increase hits on their website. To be honest the list looked very much like the Penguin modern classics catalogue and of no great excitement. But the real fascination with lists like these is to see if they confirm or challenge personal prejudices.

Adding the term ‘of all time’ to the bald ‘Top 100 Books’ reveals the futility of such lists. Even at the arrival of Armageddon it will still be impossible to put the definitive list of top novels ‘of all time’ together. The problem with such lists is the criteria used to compile them. If the list had been ‘The Top 100 Writers’ it would have been a completely different list - including playwrights, poets, essayists etc. Had the list been complied in terms of sales or library lending statistics it would be different yet again. Naturally, it is another list when books in translation are included.

The criteria used to produce a ‘canon of literature’ are notoriously complicated.  There are many lists and books of the 100 books that should be read, in order to be ‘well read’. But what does it mean to be ‘well read’? Does it make a difference to an individual to have read a certain number of the ‘right’ books?  Why is there a list at all and are some books really better than others, or just different? What makes a book ‘great art’ and thus worthy of reading? It is not surprising that groups of people should create lists of books to reflect their own interests and personal prejudices. The lofty answer might be that literature that exposes and examines the human condition or ‘being’ is worthy. To be philosophical, as Socrates is reported to have claimed – ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’. Should only ‘high art’ rather than ‘popular art’ be examined? If art is thought to reflect society isn’t it possible that all books reflect the human condition in some way or another? There are many problems here with regard to the nature and function of art that need much more detailed analysis – but as a general overview it shows the problems with lists.

As with the transformation of music from plastic discs to digital downloads, will the concept of the novel change as it moves from paper to different downloadable electronic formats? Will the concept of the novel with its set number of words continue to exist in the electronic virtual future? More importantly, will the new electronic forms of the novel still be allowed to acquire the cache of ‘art’, or will literature become more egalitarian? Will this have consequences for academics and critics?

Harold Bloom compiled an extensive ‘literary canon’ and Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution brings the history of the novel to life – and names the best selling Victorian authors that no one now remembers.

Fiction - Satire - Chafing Pt II

Part Two

Helen Fulsome looked longingly through the window at Stan Slycer’s fingers buried in the white wax flesh of a pig’s rump. He was a strong, silent, earthy man. His shop was a traditional butchers shop with sawdust on the floor and dead birds and animals hanging over the counter. The smell of raw flesh and blood filled the air. He heaved the side of meat off his shoulder and slapped it onto the chopping block as she entered the shop.

An involuntary shudder went through her.

“Morning Stan,” she said a little too loudly placing eggs on the counter. “Two dozen short this week. The hens are off about something.” She said feeling foolish. He stared at her. Under the green buttoned woollen hacking jacket he saw the blue and white stripped blouse hugged well formed breasts. Riding breeches clung to well rounded buttocks.

“Bacon,” he said as he wielded the clever deep into the pigs flesh “and eggs.” He stared again. “I like bacon and egg in the morning, after a good nights…..” He paused and she tingled in anticipation “…sleep” he said deliberately. He stared at her so hard she thought she would faint. “Do you want it now?” he said moving from behind the chopping block. She held onto the counter for fear of falling. He came and stood in front of her putting his hand under his apron. There was a long pause as they looked at each other. “The money for the eggs?” he said at last. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

 Digger Davies nodded to Stan as he entered the shop. “Stan.” For a moment the three stood and assessed each other.  “Helen,” he said in greeting. They stood like three heffers in a field.

“Digger” Stan nodded back. Helen blushed.

“Is it true you’re the real Slim Shady Stan?”

“You don’t want to believe everything you read in the papers Digger.”

“No, it was on the internet, chat forum.”

“Oh yeah and which one was that?”

“Rather not say in front of present company.”

They looked at each other again.

Digger nodded at something hidden under his coat. “A man said you might want...” he let it hang in the air.

Stan nodded. “Better go out the back then.” Digger smiled at Helen. “Helen,” he said and disappeared through a chain curtain.

 “I’ll come back , you’re busy…” she stammered.

“Morning Stan, Helen,” said Dick the postman and nodded at them.

“Dick,” Stan nodded back.

“I hear you’re the real Slim Shady.”

“You don’t want to believe everything you read on chat forums.”

“No, it was on Twitter. Where you want these letters then? Not much. Emails are doing me out of a job.”

“Digger’s out there,” he said

Dick nodded at Stan smiled at Helen and disappeared out the back.

Stan took a step closer to Helen and said in a low voice “Close at 4.00.” He was so close she could feel the heat of his body, it made her dizzy. She tried to speak but failed. She dipped her head like a young swan by way of reply and walked hesitantly to the door.

Duggie Davies, who was in some way related to Dave Davies, stopped as she passed him and watched her to the Range Rover. He adjusted the baseball cap under his hoodie, spat and took a sip of beer from the ever-present uplifted can in his right hand. “Slim Shady my arse,” he mumbled and entered the shop.

Jardine Meredith Puckersque a renowned raconteur and wit, and some said sot, wrote a history of Chaffing on the Wold between the wars - the Boer War and the Great War. The briefest glance showed that it was more anecdote than substance in nature, and in truth, much was fiction. Jardine Meredith Puckersque had done a great deal of his research in the Black Heart Inn aided and abetted by locals who drank as much as him. Stimulated by a glass or two they were able to regale him with the real history of the village. “Great sport was had in its making.” He was reported to have said in the local press. A revision of his history was made by the more abstemious Rev Jeremiah Launston Smyth a very thin and dry man. No one was really sure how the copy in the reference section of the library had been so liberally annotated in green ink.  

Chafing on the Wold is a beautiful village….

….. where a divided rural community with its retired educated narrow minded interlopers, and its uneducated and close minded natives, participate in the pretence of a master/slave relationship. It is full of ignorance, whether among those who had been gifted by a great white Victorian God with clear moral values and the natural bearing of authority, or those who grow cabbage. In short, had the Raj not returned to Cheltenham it would have found its home here.

…….possibly pre Saxon in origin. Visitors……

…….have found that there are three tea shops where seething animosities are expressed and exchanged in low voices and warm smiles. The local tea shop is for locals, but the local, local tea shop, is only for locals, while the local, locals, local tea shop, is only for local locals…They will not…

….have found the village to be a welcoming stop on a visit to the Wolds.

The village can boast at least twelve families that can trace their ancestors back as far as the Doomsday book.

……The exotic proverbial migrant birds of a feather collect together and roost high, bathing in the warm glow of the setting sun of their successful lives, while the natives, are testament to life being short, brutish and nasty. A sentiment often expressed at the bar of the Black Heart Inn is ‘It’s all bastard bollocks ent it!’

Ley Lines

Ley Lines

 

Forty years ago I half read and skimmed Alfred Watkins’ The Old Straight Track which had been pressed on me by someone who thought I would be interested in it. The book suggested that Neolithic man navigated by walking straight lines along features that could be seen. The features included ancient monuments, standing stones, ridge-tops, pools, wells and streams. These ancient tracks or ways Watkins called ‘ley lines’. Some years later whilst reading W.G. Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape I had a vague recollection of Watkins ideas, in particular his ‘salt ways’, routes that peddlers of salt would travel. The ‘salt ways’ seemed even more interesting when I started reading about drovers and drovers ‘roads’.

There were several good reasons why, in 1974, I dismissed the book as being flakey. In the late 60’s early 70’s UFO’s, the lost world of Atlantis, astral projection, and other fantastical topics were popular. Abacus, who re printed The Old Straight Track, also printed a vast range of pseudo academic books based on these subjects which sold in large numbers. ‘Ley lines’, because of  the writer John Michell undertook a mystical transformation and ended up being cited by those whole believed in ‘out of body’ experiences or astral projection, as  the lines along which energy traveled. This case was strengthened by the belief that ‘ley lines’ were what guided those dowsing. Many of the hippies of Cheltenham (where I lived at the time) believed that Cleve Hill was where there was a ‘significant’ convergence of ‘ley lines’.

As the years went by and I did more and more walking, particularly in mountains, I started to ponder on how Neolithic man had moved about and why. I began to wish that I had read Watkins’ book more thoroughly and understood the theory of ‘ley lines’ properly. I just had a feeling that there was something to ‘ley lines’. I once asked a geologist how the Romans knew where to mine for coal, lead, silver and gold, did they have geologists who knew what to look for? He thought not, they probably just stole existing working mines. This made me wonder whether they also stole existing ‘roads’. It is certain that the Romans built new roads all over the country but did they survey them too. There are Roman ‘roads’ in some quite isolated and unusual places in the Lake District, Mid Wales and the Brecons.

It was quite an emotional moment when I found The Old Straight Track in the second hand book shop in Wenlock. The price of the book, a paltry £2, is a sad reflection of how Watkins’ life work is valued today. The reason for this is that some years ago a very bright young mathematician sat down and ‘proved’ that Watkins’ theory of ‘ley lines’ was essentially just chance and the archaeologist Richard Atkinson put another nail in the coffin with his ‘telephone box leys’ argument. This, in short, was that it would be possible to make a case for telephone boxes, or anything else come to that, being set out in ‘ley lines’. I am not convinced by these arguments, there are problems with both. I agree that when putting a meter ruler on a map it is possible to find any number of ‘significant’ features that ‘might’ indicate an ‘old straight track’. However, getting away from maps, anyone who has ever navigated on a compass bearing across a mountainside knows only too well that an obvious landmark is what you look for and walk to – a tree, stream, pond, rock, dip in a ridge. There is evidence that our ancestors used trees and rocks etc as significant track markers, what is not clear is whether they diverted tracks to trees and rocks or moved trees and stones to existing tracks. When there were few or no compasses, navigating by visible features would have been the logical option.

Watkins writes “The open air man in a new district will take the first chance to get on high ground to ‘see’ or ‘spy’ ‘the lay of the land’… it was ‘lay’ and not ‘lie’, as recent writers have tended to give it.” The expression he claimed meant to survey the land.  He goes on “The present words lea, lee, lay, ley (practically identical) have the same spellings in early records with many other forms as leah, leaz, lez,leye,lai etc and is defined as a ‘tract of cultivated or uncultivated land’.”  Watkins claims that the study of place names can also show where the old straight tracks existed.

There has been a renewed interest of late in natural navigation which is fascinating. As a lot of people can navigate by the sun and tell time, there are those that can do the same by the moon. Celestial navigation only requires the knowledge of 16 stars. There were native Indians in Newfoundland who allegedly navigated at sea in fog by feeling and tasting the water for temperature and salt. Most know from the shape of wind exposed trees that the prevailing wind on this island is Westerly. Neolithic man probably had heightened navigation skills but why did he/she want to move around? Does the reason for their movement effect how they moved? Did they go up and over hills just to keep a straight line? For all the criticisms Watkins’ book is full of questions and ideas that need much more consideration and study.