I know I know - everyone has their own taste in everything, novels no exception. But sometimes you just run into a book that's been touted as one of THE Great Pieces Of Literature and you get a copy and you read and you read and you sweat actual tears of blood trying to find in it what the blessed literati are raving on about but these books remain totally defiant and all that brilliance just goes straight over your head. Damn! - missed out again! Why am I such a literary cretin?!
And it’s easy to tell if you have hold of what is a "good" book - for you. If you start reading in bed at 10 o’clock and if you suddenly realise it’s 11 o’clock but you're still wide awake, it’s a good book. But if you're fighting eye-droop and checking the clock and finding it’s only 10:15, or you're 30 pages in and you start skipping paragraphs, I say chuck the thing away before you invest time in it you don't have or it doesn't deserve. There's plenty of wide-awaker books out there aching for an appreciative pair of eyes.
I have two books on my library shelf that are totally defiant of my efforts to discover their brilliance....
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James Joyce's classic. Oft quoted. Analysed to death. Raved over. Held up as THE great example of the heights to which mugs like us should aspire.
I'm sorry James, I've managed to get to about the middle twice, and once even to page 728 of my Penguin edition, but I just run out of steam. And I LOVE Irish writers. AND I'm part Irish (I had my Ancestry dna-thingo done for the hell of it and yep - three per cent - as I always suspected). But I've kept dear old "Ulysses" on my shelf, beside "Portrait Of The Artist..." and "The Dubliners", each of which I've managed to scrape through but neither gave me huge amounts of altitude. Maybe when I'm (even) older I'll appreciate them.
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And then there's good old Salman.
Geez I tried twice to digest this book, honest, this Booker winner and voted (presumably by the same people who gave it the Booker in 1981) as the Best Booker Ever, but twice (several years apart) I got to about page 57 and each time realised I couldn't think what I'd read! All those words and not one of them stuck. It was embarrassing. That I was so unappreciative of such a work of literature. And okay, I can hear the purists howling from here but what can I say, for me it went zap! straight over the top. Every word. Sorry Salman.
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I've always contended that writers aren't meant to be creating good writing, but good READING. You don't write for yourself, you write for your reader. And that means writers of quality fiction aren't in the Writing business, or the Publishing business, or the Moneymaking business, or the Fame business or the I Want To Impress The Hell Outa You With My Literary Cleverness business. They're really in the Entertainment business.
Some of you may be tempted to see this as a touch of sour grapes from some old stodge that's ticked off at literary life because he's been knocked back too many times. And you'd be dead set right! But hey, I'M also a reader. I'm looking for quality reading that makes me sigh deeply at the soul-lifting experience of wending my way through another writer's creativity. And I do find that so many times. And far too often from writer's that never get a mention. THAT'S what gets my sensitivities twitching.
Okay, I'm done.
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