Four years ago I bought a scratch-off wall chart of the ‘100
Essential Novels’. Today, the last entry, ‘The Recognitions’ by William Gaddis,
was scratched off with a 20 cent coin. Back in January 2017 it was probably it
was just an impulse purchase, a simple click or three while scrolling and
swiping idly away at the iPad. Since then it’s consumed a fair chunk of my free
time, and the ‘100 essential novels’ have been read on trains, in the garden,
in bed, in the viewing gallery of Woking Pool, sheltering from the heat in
Florida, sheltering from the rain in Wales and sheltering from my family and
responsibilities more than a conscientious father should. Most of the reading
has taken place while putting in a token half-arsed spin on various exercise
bikes in the gyms of the Thames Valley.
There were three parts that appealed to me about the
wallchart, none of them intellectual or overly complex. The first was simple
and one of the more basic human desires, to collect and categorise shiny
things. Collecting is fun, marking off progress is fun and having some tangible
way to display one’s progress and achievements feeds the ego. Making sense of a
senseless world through categorising and labelling gives us all a sense of
control. How incredible it would be to have ‘done’ the 100 essential novels. To
be able to believe we had ‘completed’ literature. Nonsense of course, but a
comforting thought for the collectors among us, whether butterflies, Pokémon,
stamps, stickers or worthy literature.
The second part was also ego-driven (there is a theme
developing), and my shame at considering myself a bibliophile, but aware there
were huge gaps in my knowledge of literature. Generously, this could be seen as
a noble impulse, the desire to improve and educate oneself, but I suspect it
had more to do with deep-seated insecurities at not being able to join in when
confronted with genuinely clever people who can effortlessly and joyfully
expound on the centrality of Natasha’s dance to War and Peace, and how it
explains the quintessential soul of Russia. As I write this, it occurs to me
that (with two exceptions to the rule), I don’t know anyone that +could+
explain the significance of Natasha’s Dance and the chances of A) meeting
someone that can and B) meeting them at the moment they are doing it are as
likely as finding a very particular piece of hay in the unending wheatfields of
Tsarist Ukraine. So there’s a very good chance I’ve spent a fair portion of the
past four years preparing for an event infinitesimally unlikely to occur, and
doing so while neglecting to perform far more necessary activities such as
picking the kids up on time, putting the bins out and fixing the leak in the
airing cupboard. Sorry, Helen. And to compound my negligence, ‘War and Peace’
wasn’t even on the list, so I’m still fecking clueless about Natalya Ilyinichna’s
pas de châle.
Lastly, and even more simply than the first reason, I enjoy
reading. My earliest memories are of going to the maternity ward at Hillingdon
Hospital when my youngest brother was born and being excited not because of the
birth of our Kev, but because I could climb up on the bed and Mum would read me
Asterix. We didn’t have many books at home, and the only time I can remember
Dad reading something that wasn’t the Daily Express sports pages was when he
was on jury duty and took a copy of Spike Milligan’s wartime memoirs with him
to stave off the boredom of sitting through a case of harassment and accidental
exposure at Isleworth Crown Court. So it’s not an inherited love, and I remain
unremittingly jealous of those lucky enough to have grown up in houses
brim-full with tottering stacks of paperbacks, with Radio 4 playing in the
background and a broadsheet on the kitchen table. When I found out the family
of a good friend named all their pet cats after Dickens characters I felt like
I had finally found my people. I tried to get them to adopt me. I’d even have
let them call me Pecksniff.
