Richard Baum

Like a lot of people, I stave of suicide-by-boredom by spending Saturday afternoons strolling around bleak city centre shopping arcades, occasionally spending money on stuff I don’t need. Yesterday, in a fit of artistic over-reaching, I spent £25 on acrylic paint and brushes, in the laughable belief that I would use them to create something worthy of hanging over the fireplace. The moment has passed now, but sadly the receipt is in the bin.

Most weekends I end up in Waterstone’s at some point. And yesterday I was thumbing through the the varied contents of one of their door-side piles when a middle aged couple in sandles and beige clothes approached me. The man picked up a book and said “Mmm… Murakami is everywhere at the moment, isn’t he? Have you read Norweigan Wood…?” His companion nodded sagely and said “Yes, but I hear this one explores much broader themes.”

Such exchanges disturb me, mainly because I am incapable of having them. I have no idea who is “everywhere,” or why. I know there’s a book called “Norweigan Wood,” only because I picked it up once wondering how anyone could’ve spun a yarn that thick about the Beatles song. I put it down again when I found out that they hadn’t, and I have genuinely no idea what it’s about. I don’t know who Murakami is either. Put on the spot I’d have guessed he was a chef.

I hope that by “everywhere,” the woman meant “in the snippets of the Guradian culture pull-outs that I’ve read in the hope that I’ll appear impressive.” But there is this nagging doubt that actually she does mean everywhere. In every learned conversation. Around every sophisticated dinner party table. On the lips of every member of the congoscenti and in the minds of every person in Britain with a brain in their heads. Except me. Oh, how they laugh at me, these people and their novels.

Going into Waterstone’s is always a humbling affair. There are people in there, strolling around the literary criticism section with their hemp shopping bags and flowery skirts, who know more about books than I would do even if I lived in the shop doing nothing but reading for twenty years. Where do they get the time? It takes me weeks to read a novel, even if I devour one page after another, simply because after I get though about five of them it’s time to go to a meeting or go to bed. Are these booky people devoid of all other things in their lives? Do they go home to their charming Victorian semis in Chorlton and find nothing within but a pile of books? Do they not work? Or sleep?

I am insanely envious of these people. Their conversations about novels make them sound interesting and cultured, whereas my conversations about the Bury mayoral referendum make me sound geekish and nerdy. They know about authors and themes and narrative arcs. I know about local government performance trends, road maintenance budgets and the Prestwich Plan. They have a favourite passage from Ulysses, I have a favourite political website. They can talk about the new McEwan (and they’d probably scoff at it too…), and pretty young students fall at their feet. I can name the Shadow Home Secretary, and pretty young students run away. Literally, they run from me. 

Maybe it’s because books are sexy and councils are not. I need to find a better way of turning that equation round than quoting recycling statistics.

Even the fun stuff that I know about, like the Premier League and The West Wing, just make me seem a bit over keen. There is a casual effortlessness about literary discussion which seems to go hand in hand with sophistication. And now I’m thinking about how I know nothing about wine either… Was there a week in school where all this was taught? Was I off sick? How do some people know all this stuff, and I don’t? I hope to God they’re faking.

It’s not that I don’t read. I think it’s that I read the wrong stuff. I bet if I asked that couple in Waterstone’s what they were reading, they’d have named a novel so obscure yet so influential that I would’ve been swallowed up in a vortex of panic at my own ignorance. I though am currently reading six things. I am reading The Economist, the Lib Dem News, Private Eye, LGA First Magazine, a novel by Mark Haddon so lightweight that it needs lead weights to stop it floating away, and Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, which I picked up after his birthday concert the other week, thinking that I probably should.

Maybe that’s the problem. If I had six novels on the go at once, before too long I’d be able to at least hold a conversation about them all, so long as it didn’t venture towards comparing their endings. Maybe these bookworms never read anything but novels, and so whilst they can chat relentlessly about Doris Lessing, they don’t have a clue about Robert Mugabe.

Anyway, it’s an issue, this Waterstone’s thing. I go in there and come out full of remorse that I haven’t dedicated my life to reading the great novels, and full of the knowledge that even if I started now I’d still never finish. Every week I’d read a couple of books, only for twenty more to be published that make the critics gush with praise. I need to find a way to reconcile myself to the fact that I probably won’t ever read the wonderful works of classic literature. I will probably never have time to appreciate the power of the written word to convey humanity’s strongest and deepest emotions. Which is sad but, I fear, a necessary sacrifice for now if I’m going to fully understand this quarter’s housing maintenance statistics.

And, whilst the book people can moan about congestion charging and post office closures round their dinner table, making no difference to anything, I can… Well, at least I get my picture in The Advertiser from time to time.

Rick