The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life (14 page)

In Brown's novels, Robert Langdon has an editor called Jonas Faukman. A well-meaning soul, he works in Manhattan, has a goatee beard and over ‘power lunches', listens patiently while Langdon burbles on about conspiracies and Mary Magdalene and the Priory of Sion like – well, like a character from a Dan Brown novel. In this regard, Brown is for once entirely accurate:

‘“
Authors,” he [Faukman] thought. “Even the sane ones are nuts.
”'

9. THE PLANKTON FACTOR

Both
Moby-Dick
and
The Da Vinci Code
have spawned entire secondary industries of movies, merchandise, spin-off books and, in the case of the latter, lawyers' fees for plagiarism suits (always settled in Brown's favour, it should be noted). Some authors have even written entire books comparing and contrasting Brown's work with the complete canon of Western literature: a deplorable act. Both books have also attracted a high number of Internet geeks, conspiracy theories and obsessive crackpots. The
Moby-Dick
feeding pool has more academic bottom – the crackpots have PhDs and publish their ravings in quarterly journals – but the ecology is much the same. A Leviathan will always host its share of barnacles.

10. THE
ZELIG
FACTOR

In Woody Allen's movie
Zelig
, the eponymous hero involuntarily changes his appearance to physically resemble whoever he is talking to at the time – rabbis, doctors, Nazis, etc. Under hypnosis, he relates the childhood trauma that triggered this condition: ‘At school . . . There were very bright people . . . Asked me if I read
Moby-Dick
. . . I was ashamed to say I never read it . . .'

The Da Vinci Code
and
Moby-Dick
are both novels about which, in social situations, we might feel a Zelig-like pressure to adapt, to express a view, to employ phrases like ‘I couldn't put it down!' or ‘You wouldn't catch me reading that rubbish!' or ‘I admired the author's use of symbolism!', even if we have not read either and have little intention of doing so. Ideally, it is a pressure we should resist but, as you will have realised by now, some of us find it hard to do so. As Zelig confesses, ‘I want to be liked.'

*

Unlike Dan Brown, Herman Melville is not around to enjoy the recognition and fortune that was later afforded him. He died obscure and despondent, a failure in his own time and by his own standards. Fifty years on, he became a literary icon. Although there are signs that the Brown phenomenon may be burning itself out – British charity shops report that
The Da Vinci Code
is their most-donated book, although this may simply be because it has now been read by every man, woman and child in the country and there is no one left to buy it – he has become more famous, faster, than any other writer in living memory, with the possible exceptions of J.K. Rowling and the aforementioned E.L. James. Yet fifty years from now, it may well be that few people remember his name.

And this is really the point of this Love Match: implausible as it may sound, Melville and Brown were trying to write the same book – like Leonard Zelig, they both wanted to fit in and be liked. Dan Brown was not trying to write
Moby-Dick
, a key to all mythologies – that would be ridiculous – but at some level, Herman Melville was trying to write
The Da Vinci Code
. Had he succeeded, he would not have had to spend the rest of his life working as a customs officer. Like all writers, he hoped his books would engage, inspire and sell. Melville may not have desired riches in the way I think Dan Brown did – he was not trying to make it in showbusiness – but after the failure of
Moby-Dick
, he was not able to earn even a living wage from his writing. This fact blighted the rest of his days. And I do not believe he was so committed to art for art's sake that he would willingly have forsaken a modest but loyal readership in his lifetime on a promise of immortality. Because when he wants it to,
Moby-Dick
thrills and dazzles and tells a page-turning, exhilarating story. But it does everything else too.

When Herman Melville died, he was working on a novella called
Billy Budd, Sailor
. It was the first fiction he had written for many years. Tucked away by his widow Elizabeth, the manuscript was not found and published until 1924, by which time the Melville revival was well under way. Though it may be short,
Billy Budd, Sailor
is an unforgettable and extraordinary book. At the end of his miserable later life, its author's wayward genius had returned, inimitable and intact. It felt then, and feels now, like the fierce, pathetic proof of the clipping found glued to the inside of the desk on which Melville wrote his story:

‘Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.'

Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy

‘As a hungry animal seizes every object it meets, hoping to find food in it, so Vronsky unconsciously seized now on politics, now on new books, now on pictures.'

Anna Karenina
, Part V, Chapter 8

‘“You have a consistent character yourself and you wish all the facts of life to be consistent, but they never are . . . You also want the activity of each separate man to have an aim, and love and family life always to coincide – and that doesn't happen either. All the variety, charm and beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”'

Anna Karenina
, Part I, Chapter 11

At the National Gallery in London, Alex and I were standing at the feet of a tiger in a typhoon.

‘Grrr!' said Alex, pointing up at the painting and giggling. ‘Grrr!'

I tried to smile at the blazer-wearing attendant who was sitting next to the picture but she refused to look at us. My
happy child threatened to disrupt the sombre mood of her gallery. What do I think this is, Tate Modern?

Fig. 7:
Surpris! (Surprised!).
Henri Rousseau, 1891. Tiger, bottom left.

(copyright © 2014 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)

‘You're right, Alex,' I told him. ‘Grrr!'

It was the week after Christmas. The National Gallery was full of families, parties of tourists and shoppers taking a break from the sales. They congregated near the
Water-Lilies
or
Sunflowers
, before making a beeline for the Sainsbury's gift shop – sorry, the Sainsbury Wing gift shop – to purchase headscarves or jigsaws or, bizarrely, miniature ginger-haired, one-eared Vincent Van Gogh dolls you could stick to the door of your fridge.

Twenty yards away, through a set of heavy wooden double doors, on the south wall of the Harry and Carol Djanogly Room, at a height of approximately 440 centimetres off the ground (I feel the spirit of Dan Brown working through me) was a painting I wanted Alex to see. Georges Seurat's
Bathers at Asnières
is my favourite picture in the National Gallery. If I am passing, and I have time to spare, I will come to Room 44 and sit in front of it and rest like the boy in the straw hat. It measures 201 by 300 centimetres, which is irrelevant. Look at the picture, the haze of a summer's day by the Seine more than a century ago. Asnières was an industrial suburb of Paris; in the background Seurat has painted the smoking chimneys of the local factories. Should these youths be at work? Or is light industry intruding on their day off, contributing smog to a lazy blue sky? At these moments, such questions are irrelevant too. The painting is a pool of colour and light.

‘What do you think?' I asked Alex.

‘I like the doggy,' said Alex thoughtfully. ‘Woof!'

Fig. 8:
Une Baignade, Asnières (Bathers at Asnières).
Georges Seurat, 1884. Dog, bottom left.

(courtesy National Gallery)

He was right again. The dog completes the painting; its tail, its alertness, its solidity. Everything else in the picture is infectiously drowsy and slow.

Seurat's elevation of such a humdrum scene and determinedly common people was considered rather ludicrous in its day. It always puts me in mind of Jacques Demy's 1964 film
Les parapluies de Cherbourg
, which takes the commonplace setting of a dingy Normandy fishing port and stages a winsomely pretty social-realist musical in it – an idea which, if you don't get it, must seem ludicrous too. But Seurat's painting and Demy's film, like William Eggleston's photographs or Ray Davies' songs for
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
, frame ‘ordinary' people in provincial situations and make them glow. Their gaze is not uncritical but it rarely patronises. I would like to call it magical realism but that term is already taken, having been registered at a sweltering Latin-American patent office in the early 1980s and usually signifying a mixture of the real and the surreal (‘surreal realism' never caught on). Let's just say I like the doggy too, because Seurat has painted a real dog magically, not a fantastical dog with wings and a top hat.

In the gift shop, Alex and I bought postcards, a small hardback of Rousseau's animal pictures and a Monet phoneblock for my mother. We left the magnetic Vincents where they were. Alex was old enough now to enjoy going to museums, galleries and cinemas, and their gift shops too. They were all parts of the same experience, and we liked visiting them together, together.

Outside, preparations were being made for the imminent New Year celebrations, when crowds of revellers would gather in Trafalgar Square and revel through the night. (Just as the word ‘flotilla' has become tied to the phrase ‘little ships', so ‘reveller' only seems to come out on New Year's Eve.) I would not be doing much revelling myself this year but I would be having a marvellous time. I would be reading Tolstoy.

A few weeks earlier at a Christmas drinks party, I had met a gentleman from Louisiana who had gone into raptures over
A Confederacy of Dunces
, not because of its ferociously cynical worldview but because it offered a realistic social portrait of his hometown, New Orleans. I explained about the List of Betterment.

‘Oh my God!' he cried. ‘Have you read
Anna Karenina
? Tell me you're going to read
Anna Karenina
!'

Yes, I said. I am going to read
Anna Karenina
. It still felt audacious to say this and know it was true.

On Christmas Eve, I began Aннa Kapeнинa (
Anna Karenina
, though
Karenin
is arguably more correct). On Christmas Day, between unwrapping presents, assembling a Noah's Ark and basting my first turkey, I read some more. By Boxing Day my priority was no longer my own family but the Oblonskys and their circle. At my mother-in-law's I stole away to the spare bedroom when the Pictionary came out. This was not just a great book; it was a great book I could love. Of course, I loved my family too, never more so than when in another part of the house, reading about someone else's family,
long ago and far away.

Is it wrong to prefer books to people? Not at Christmas. A book is like a guest you have invited into your home, except you don't have to play Pictionary with it or supply it with biscuits and stollen. Tina and I were still getting used to the shape of Christmas now Alex was part of the family. When he was a baby, we had been appalled to discover that he would not even give us Christmas Day off. He was worse than Scrooge! No more lying around in bed, sipping sherry and blubbing at the heartwarming seasonal specials on TV. Now Alex was a few years older, Christmas was an enchanted time, not least for the grandparents who, having spent many years slaving over sprouts, spuds and turkeys for their own broods, could now sit back and watch us do the same for them. This is what is called ‘the circle of life'.

When Alex was born, my aunt gave me a far-sighted piece of advice. ‘Family life is wonderful, Andrew,' she told me, ‘but you have to give in to it.' I think my aunt knew I might find this a challenge – and she was right. Having a child brought with it a new, unanticipated role I did not really want. I loved being Alex's dad but I could do without the secondary responsibilities to everybody else. It was hard, repetitive and often nerve-jangling work. Tina's mum and dad are long divorced; my mother lives on her own; my brother-in-law and his family emigrated to Australia a few years ago. So at Christmas, we don't just have to chop and shop and wrap and cook, we do it atop an emotional powder keg which might blow at any time between the first long-distance Skype call and the Queen's Speech.