The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life (38 page)

The modern novel, by which I mean the post-war Western intellectual novel, is shaped therefore as much by the development of ideas, modernism, post-modernism etc. as by finally not having to worry where the next meal is coming from – arguably for the first time in history, or at least in
the history of the novel. And freed from the burden of debt, hardship, hunger etc., what, who, does the modern novel produce?

Ignatius J. Reilly.

Today is Day 15 of reading:
I Capture the Castle
by Dodie Smith.

Philip Roth: ‘To read a novel requires a certain amount of devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don't read the novel really.'

Today is Day 21 of reading:
I Capture the Castle
by Dodie Smith.

‘High summer can be pitiless to the low-spirited.'
I Capture the Castle

I'm back.

First, let me apologise for the break in communications. A stressful family holiday and an employment crisis intervened, both resolved amicably. Plus, it has been hot. If it isn't raining I find it hard to concentrate.

So it took me three weeks to finish
I Capture the Castle
, which diluted the pleasure I was able to take in the book; a shame, I probably should have waited for a less turbulent moment.

The story follows a girl's progress from late childhood to the woebegone world of grown-ups, 1930s bohemia on its uppers, stately homes without heating or much food. The tone lies somewhere between Noel Streatfeild and Nancy Mitford – waspishly jolly, with little jolts of sadness. Funny too. Cassandra's stepmother Topaz is melodramatic and flighty but we are allowed to see that she is also perceptive and caring; her father is shown to be in the grip of a devastating writers' block, an all-encroaching failure of nerve which has lasted for years. He is both irresponsible and helpless. Actually, I cannot recall ever reading such a compassionate and
adult
depiction of writers' block in a novel. Cassandra's solution may be childish but it does capture the castle. She locks her father in his tower; he is furious with her; but once he starts to write, he does not want to come down.

Many women read
I Capture the Castle
at an impressionable age and never forget it. Says J. K. Rowling: ‘
This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met
.' Dodie Smith's best-known work is
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
, so it wasn't long ago that
I Capture the Castle
sat alongside that book in the children's section. However, now grown-ups openly read children's books in public –
Harry Potter
, Philip Pullman, Tove Jansson – I surmise that the Rowling quote has been put on the front cover to appeal to adult readers, not children. A marketing department using its powers for good for once; this is a fully grown novel which should be read by fully grown women. And even men.

Picking up the pace tomorrow.

Today is Day 1 of reading:
The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Sped through
The Leopard
in a day. Enjoyed it. If pushed, I would describe it as melancholic, elegiac, poignant and evocative. Might read it every summer, if only to find out if any of it has sunk in.

Today is Day 1 of reading:
Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry.

From the back cover: ‘
It is the fiesta Day of Death in Mexico and Geoffrey Firmin – ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man – is living out the last day of his life. Drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him, the consul is an enduring tragic figure and his story, the image of one man's agonized journey towards Calvary.
'

Not a comedy, then; need I say I am looking forward to this one?

Today is Day 12 of reading:
Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry.

‘Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine.'

So we bid farewell to the picturesque Mexican town of Parián and its dipsomaniac expats, murdering banditos and symbolic dead dogs, where the tropical firmament is always tempestuous and the mescal flows like the blood of Christ at Golgotha.
Haste ye back!

A date at the book fête.

Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. The Edinburgh International Book Festival. Someone once said that compared to the electrifying carnival of the Fringe, the Book Festival is a coconut shy. Gardens and marquees throng with the sort of people who feel guilty when they watch TV. All ages represented, gentlemen and ladies in equal number, though few black or Asian faces.

On Saturday morning, I attend a sell-out performance by Albanian dissident novelist Ismail Kadare and his translator David Bellos. Although the event is billed as a discussion, it is obviously rehearsed; they seem to be reading from a script. Five different company logos are visible on or around the stage where the gurus sat. ‘
How does a book make you feel?
' enquires a
Royal Bank of Scotland banner. ‘
Heartbroken. Moved. Spellbound. Captivated. Inspired. Angry! Sad. Happy :). Nervous. Shocked!
'

On this occasion, none of the above. It is a curiously unenlightening hour and lousy theatre as well. Kadare seems content to offer a précis of himself in line with what the crowd has paid to see: an important man, earnest, wry, modest in assessment of his own achievements. Really, though, he gives nothing away. Bellos feeds him the prompts and Kadare delivers his lines and does his best impersonation – himself. On the Fringe, their act would die on its arse.

I cannot blame Kadare. All writers need strategies when it comes to doing promotion, even those in line for the Nobel Prize in Literature. And there is no doubt ticket-holders went away satisfied, delighted to have passed an hour in the presence of a great man. It reminded me of the high point of a Kraftwerk concert – I like Kraftwerk – when the audience roars its approval for the robot dummies the group has sent out in its place. Perhaps the real Kadare was at home in Albania, working, while this Kadare went out on a European tour to meet its public; perhaps David Bellos needed to be there to operate the controls. Alternatively, perhaps Ismail Kadare, the real one, likes being applauded. Perhaps he's only human.

Mrs Bast: ‘
It's all right, you're allowed to be melodramatic on the blog
.'

I know I said this before but I really do need to keep these entries shorter. Don't know how Pooter kept it up.

Today is Day 2 of reading:
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys.

An amazing book; the story of the woman who becomes Bertha Mason in
Jane Eyre
, the madwoman Mr Rochester keeps locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall, told both from her perspective and from his. Fortunately,
Jane Eyre
is still fresh in my mind. If
Wide Sargasso Sea
only functioned as a prelude, it would be a considerable technical achievement: the narrative voices are forceful and convincing. But there seems to be so much more to it than that. It is about colonialism and Empire, gender and power; it is also about the way those subjects find expression in literature. It is oblique, experimental and deeply felt. It is so beautifully written and so full of pain.