William Gaddis, The Recognitions

 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.

 

Owen Hatherley, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Michelle Paver, Wakenhyrst, David Hackett Fischer, Liberty & Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas, Magnus Mills, Explorers of the New Century

 'Writing this under duress as I am coming to the end of William Gaddis' The Recognitions, which will deserve an entry all to itself. There were some good reads in this batch, a history of Labour government in London written from the point of view of the left, a cracking slice of East Anglian gothic, and David Hackett Fischer's 'Liberty and Freedom' inspired by the jaw-dropping scenes in DC as Trump supporters with their own view of liberty and freedom attached the Capitol building, which should symbolise both. Very good on the clash of different views of liberty and freedom in the Us and how they have developed and clashed. then finally a Magnus Mills comfort read, the normal sparse surrealism in an enclosed world.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Martyn Rady, The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power, Henry Treece, Hounds Of The King, Roberto Bolano 2666

2666 leaves me with just one more of the '100 essential novels' to read that I started all those years ago. It's a great big wodge of a book which has been staring at me from the book pile on top of the chest of drawers since before lockdown started. I decided not to attempt it or the other remaining book, William Gaddis' The Recognitions during lockdown, as life is hard enough! as many critics have said, it can be seen not as one book but as five separate books, and all stood alone as reads that gripped me and kept me interested. the exception was the core of the novel, which at times turned into a list of horrific murders of women in Northern Mexico. hugely ambitious though, and it has made me want to read more of his work. On the others, yet another book about the Habsburgs and that glorious lost mitteleuropa they represent, of ceremony, inefficiency, polyglotism, open borders, railways, regalia and refusal to adjust to the modern world. Steinbeck's East of Eden was an epic, I love reading his work and this may be the best. I'll have to reread The Grapes of Wrath. At home, the mismanagement of COVID means the UK now has the highest death rate in the world and we are in a 'mockdown' when we are all meant to stay at home, but people are still working, kids are still going to school and shops are still open. 

John Le Carre, Smiley's People, Bob Mortimer & Andy Dawson, Athletico Mince, John Masefield, The Box Of Delights, John Kampfner, Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country, Stuart Turton, The Devil And The Dark Water, Paul embery, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class

 More Holiday comfort reads as the post-Brexit trade deal is ratified and COVID cases continue to increase. Le Carre passed away over the period too, a superb writer who has been pigeon-holed as a 'spy writer', when in reality he has much to say about the state of post war Britain. 'Athletico Mince' was a cash-in spinoff from a very funny podcast featuring Bob Mortimer. It started as a football podcast, but quickly evolved into something much bigger and funnier that uses football as a jumping-off point for a series of grotesque characters. Roy Hodgson is a Warhammer obsessive, Harry Kane a pompous leader of a rubbish kids' gang, Peter Beardsley a tragic halfwit constantly abused by his poached egg-obsessed missus. I find myself laughing out loud at the absurdity, but really it's just two very funny blokes mucking about. 'The Box of Delights' was the purple pim and just right for Christmas Day, and then I've just finished Paul Embery's fascinating book. I agree with much of it, and how the Labour Party has abandoned and even come to despise many of the people who it should be representing, the economically left-wing but socially conservative working class. I do despair of the Labour party, and its obsession with minority issues like misgendering and shutting down of anything that questions the socially liberal orthodoxy.  The big question is whether the Labour Party, with an almost entirely socially and economically liberal PLP and overwhelmingly middle-class membership can ever reestablish its connection with the people it should be representing. As long as the unions back the party, I'll stay a member, but I'd happily jump ship for a viable alternative. I'm hardly a social conservative myself, but recognise that's a legitimate viewpoint for millions of people. The party doesn't speak to them, and it doesn't speak to me either. i find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with so much that Leanne Wood of Plaid and Caroline Lewis of the Greens say, and very little of what the leadership of the Labour Party say at the moment (Back Boris' awful trade deal, reopen schools as a priority, don't tax the wealthy more).

Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

 What a Christmas comfort read, just right amidst all the chaos of COVID restrictions and our shambolic government changing the rules at the last minute. I didn't savour it as I should have. My original plan was to read in real-time, starting as the novel does on the 20th December. But Helen wanted to watch the Strictly final, so I read and read a bit more. It's a shame as I raced through it rather, it is familiar territory after all. It will be a strange Christmas this year, but we'll make the best of it. I've just broken the 500 miles run target I set myself, which I'm v proud of given that I took 6 months off after the Surrey Half. I've lost 10kg over this year, cycled more than ever and if I make it to 552 miles over the next 10 days then will have run the furthest ever too. 5 miles a day though including Christmas. . . 

David Abulafia, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, JP Donleavy, A Fairytale of New York, Magnus Mills, Tales of Muffled Oars, Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

 'Started with a mega-history of the world from the perspective of the oceans, and it was nice to read more about the Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific and the trade and navigation of the Indian Ocean before getting on to familiar territory as the europeans explode out from the Med and Atlantic. 'A Fairytale of New York' was on my reading list purely because of the name, and it was a bit of a let-down. couldn't really get into it, wasn't at all funny as I had been led to believe. The latest Magnus Mills has been published through amazon and was like reading a printout, but was the usual Magnus Mills enclosed world or pubs, meetings, routing and surrealism with an anonymous narrator. Read in a day, a real treat. Finally, Laurie Lee's memoir of his travels in Spain. I thought it was about his wartime experience, but it ends as he ships out of Spain just before the war starts. In the real world, I'm becoming increasingly disillusions with the Labour Party. The Leadership's scorched earth policy to destroy the left of the party is seeing many good people suspended or expelled, and their timid policies and abstentions are thoroughly dispiriting. The awful shadow minister for schools, Wes Streeting, is supporting the government's policy of keeping schools open above all else when it is obvious that it is leading to an increase in cases. How can it possibly be that 2 people cannot meet in a house or pub or garden but 2000 kids and staff can spend six hours a day in the same building?   They seem to have reverted to the 'Tory lite' approach of 2010-2015. I'm not sure who they think they will attract, but they are losing committed Labour members like me. I stuck with it before Corbyn, but having seen how the right sabotaged and undermined the left, I'm in no mood to bite my tongue any longer. i think I'll stay in the party so  I can use my vote, but nothing else. 

Ned Palmer, A Cheesemonger's History of the British Isles, Stephen Lawhead, Hood, Alexander Watson, The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl, John le Carre, The Honourable Schoolboy, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

 'Hood' was recommended by Lucy Mangan as a comfort read, a retelling of Robin Hood set in Wales.  Didn't grip me though, The dialogue was so clunky and cliched. 'Have at thee, thou varlet!' After that though, 3 gripping reads. Yet more on Eastern Europe and the twilight of the Habsburgs, a Le Carre and the new book from Colson Whitehead, a jarring tale of abuse and the dilemma of how to react to the authority of evil and oppression - oppose and suffer or accommodate and survive. I'm a coward, no doubt I'd take the latter. In the world outside books, a vaccine has been developed for the virus and the roll out started yesterday. We are all still distancing and the kids have had to isolate again following cases at school, but there is light at the end of the tunnel now. Unfortunately the light just means we can see the car crash that is Brexit.