Purchasers of houses do not like books. They make houses look old and tired.
Lose the books!” I heard this advice in one of those “how to sell your
house” makeover programmes, addressed to the hapless owner of a house (like
mine) stuffed with books.
The madeover television house never has books. It has a single candle in the
fireplace and pointless sculpted objects, and pebbles, and clever lamps –
but nowhere to put books. Or hang your hat or swing your cat. It doesn’t
have a larder or walk-in storage cupboard, desk, bike or dog basket. Just a
leather sofa, a plasma TV screen and acres of wooden flooring between.
Just look at any advert for a “stunning” new apartment: “Incorporating pure
silk wall-coverings, bespoke furniture sourced from around the world and an
integrated audio-visual system, this apartment is one of the most
sophisticated and stylish in London. Rent £4,000 a week.” No visible
bookshelves.
This would not surprise Professor George Steiner, who predicted years ago that
reading would become a monastic and solitary pursuit, as it was originally,
confined to the literate minority. Look on the Tube: people are texting and
listening to iPods, not turning pages. True, bookshops are packed at
Christmas, but books are “a luxury item” now, a bookseller told me on
Christmas Eve. He didn’t have The Meaning of Life by Terry
Eagleton, which Simon Jenkins had just recommended on Radio 4. But there was
a pile of Do Ants Have Arseholes?and plenty ofWho Writes This Crap?
I staggered home with the Ted Hughes letters and the Noël Coward letters
(weighing 4lb each) knowing that there would be no space for them in this
unsaleable house, where books are stacked behind doors, under desks, on and
below stairs, in the cellar. It was time to google the Kindle. The Kindle,
portable and pocket-sized, weighing just over 10oz (283g), is Amazon’s
latest electronic reading device: $399 (£200), with 200,000 titles
available. Not out here yet, but in America it sold out instantly.
Surely, I tell myself, clinging on to books (including a roomful of
long-outgrown children’s books) is as crazy as keeping every item of
clothing since the age of 5 hung up on the walls on show for ever. Have you
ever heard a wall of bookshelves crashing down? I have. When the thunderous
rumbling abated, there was an Everest of books and rubble on the carpet. I
did not heed that warning; the shelves were rebuilt.
The habit of hanging on to even unread books was scorned by Helene Hanff, of 84
Charing Cross Road fame – “Otherwise, how would people know that you’re
educated, right?” she said witheringly. Her tiny New York apartment had just
a single bookshelf. Nothing was less sacrosanct to her than a mediocre book.
I did not heed her either.
A friend who downsized ruthlessly last year, from family house to rented flat,
said that it was agony. But being an agony aunt by profession, she was
upbeat about it: “If you need a book that you’ve junked, you can always get
it within 24 hours, online, and dirt cheap.” But it was still agony, because
each book reflects a slice of your life: childhood, student days, first and
later loves.
My books’ endpapers are covered in scribbles, review notes, lecture notes;
they have yellowing reviews tucked inside their torn covers, dedications on
fly-leaves, authors’ signatures. Every book – from Molesworth
and Just William and Stuart Little, to political Pelicans (now
history) to dark green Viragos and illustrated Folios, to first editions
bought at auction when I was feeling rich, to paperbacks oil-stained on
Greek beaches and jotted with hilarious menu items – is a memory. Books have
tentacles because of what they represent. A book-lined room announces that
here is a world of silence and slow time, the obverse of “a culture
inebriated by noise and gregariousness” (Steiner again).
I want to hold them, not click on them. On these dark wintry mornings I reach
out for Rupert Everett, which is bliss. No volume is left unmarked. You
can’t do that with a Kindle, can you? Yes, apparently you can highlight
passages (click) and dog-ear the corner (click) to mark your place. But it’s
not A BOOK. As Groucho Marx said: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best
friend.” (He added: “Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.”) I have yet
to reply to Sir Tom Stoppard, who wrote to all members of the London Library
(to which I am pathetically attached, however rarely I browse its dusty
stacks) explaining the rise in annual subscriptions from £210 to £375. How
many books could I buy for that sum, I wonder? This way madness, and
resignation, lies.
So let’s start the cull. I reach out at random from my desk and find The
Kemsley Manual of Journalism, published in 1950, unopened since
childhood. Opening it again I find that it is signed by (Viscount) Kemsley!
And the chapter on foreign news is by Ian Fleming! I google it and find it
is a “collectable”: £10 to £75. But no, I will not flog a book that belonged
to my pa, who had in 1950 just achieved his ambition to be a cartoonist, on
a Kemsley paper. Books are more than just books. Mine, like everyone’s, are
life’s milestones. But they are also millstones. And the Kindle may be as
ubiquitous as the Blackberry by next Christmas. So soon? Yes. The typewriter
went, and so did the vinyl LP, and the cassette.
I can imagine the children despairing one day, not over one’s death but over
the books. Some house-clearance outfit will tell them that there’s no call
for books any more, even from libraries; and they will cart them off to the
dump.
Answers from a postcard, please
One of the last poems of the late James Michie (“Jaspistos” of The
Spectator) was his Collage: a postcard poem, “14 sentences culled
from postcards received over the years”. I decided it would make a good
party game. Here’s mine: So many kind words and letters about Dad.
Tynan was right – theatre of passion and ideas is crucial.
I liked Catherine’s story of getting Eliot on television.
Don’t you wish life was as serene as this painting?
Crisp snow and blue skies, fireworks at midnight on the green.
Ah, if only all 2002 is like that. Do you know Faye Inchfawn? I’m looking
for a tramp steamer as soon as I’ve finished my novel.
Have you been bankrupted by your dentist? Jane and I are in Sheffield,
setting about high society.
Deirdre complained about the smell of garlic for 36 hours.
I have reached the Green Caravan. Please come before Bush blows us all up.
Long live the ups and downs of life.
Masterful tribute
I hope you read this in time to catch Tony Palmer’s tribute to Ralph Vaughan
Williams,O Thou Transcendent, on Five today at 9am. Like all Palmer’s
work on composers, it is masterful, focusing with a muscular intensity on
the symphonies – interspersed with harrowing footage of war and famine – and
the choral music: “If people don’t sing, they aren’t whole,” Vaughan
Williams said. It is also a chance to hear some splendid voices of an
almost-vanished generation, not least that of Vaughan Williams’s widow,
Ursula, who was a poet and librettist, became RVW’s lifeline and wrote his
excellent biography. Recorded by Palmer just before she died last year at
96, she says of her husband: “He was a perfect man, and a sweet man, and a
delicious man, and I love him.”
