Burn Before Reading
I knew I had to be prepared for visiting ye ould breeding grounds this week; County Galway can generate such cumbersome states of mind. Which is why I brought novels with me! Classics, indeed. Modern masterpieces that have inspired, enlivened and comforted so many. Surely be to God they’d work on me?
I’m not a great reader, believe it or not, mostly because I find it difficult to accept that I couldn’t have done better than whatever author’s under my beady black spotlight. Most readers like to curl up on a sofa, or a window seat, or in bed with a good book; I cushion myself on my ego, and it covers me over and blinds me. If I’m not grabbed … positively accosted by the first page, I’m slamming the covers faster than a beatnik as managed by Louis Walsh. My ego may render me insufferable in the eyes of many, but at least it keeps me moist during droughts.
No good writer would be who they were if they didn’t have a passion for reading, says my common sense, so in my defence I must state that I devoured novels as a younger, less cynical crone. In a house without a PC, Sky television, or even a car, there was little else to do apart from count thistles or play chicken with vaguely poisonous-looking berries. I’ve completed my training, as far as I can make out. I’ve read enough, and I read it all before I became discerning, and ruined.
Still, I feel safe enough around classics to give them a whirl – after all, a thousand English teachers can’t be wrong (something Batt O’Keeffe would be wise to remember). I had to bring something to read for the days I was due as penance in Galway; Mam’s gaff is still without a PC, Sky Television, or a car. I chose to bring One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and A Kestrel For A Knave.
I read Heard It In The Playground, Mysteries of The Unknown, and A Gentle Touch And Other Pony Stories.
Oh, it weren’t my fault, honest it weren’t! My mother’s house is scattered with shite books – Reader’s Digest Condensed Novels, out-of-print school readers, torn picture dictionaries, airport novels so trashy no one in my family would admit to having actually bought them. And shite, disposable books, especially those from your childhood, are very hard to resist peeking through. Then skimming. And consequently drinking – tearing through words like a runaway train, gulping badly-edited, plotless drivel, thirsting for nonsense, diversion … respite from complexity, and common sense, and art. For fuck’s sake, I got through Garry Kilworth’s “Hunters Moon” in an hour (Watership Down with foxes, essentially), only to discover the last ten pages had fallen out and been lost. And it bothered me. I howled.
I take comfort in believing I’m not alone. There must be many of us out there with artificially dog-eared copies of A Clockwork Orange or No Country For Old Men, brought along on holidays with lofty, well-meaning intentions, and forgotten about for a copy of a Martina Cole fished out of the apartment complex pool (if it were the real Martina Cole, I’d leave her in it). How many of us bright sparks have fought over Heat magazine in doctors’ waiting rooms, or cried with delight on finding an old Sweet Valley High book during bedroom redecoration? Had I found one of my old Malory Towers books (the plots of which I looked up on Wikipedia the other day; what a pile of arse!), I may have just short-circuited and lobotomised myself with joy.
Still, I have decided to refuse myself the shame you might think due to me. I may have spent my time in Galway up to my elbows in clap-trap, but at least I didn’t succumb to the copy of “Don’t Tell Mummy” I found in my mam’s sitting room. Badly-written fluff or teenage guff is one thing, but misery-lit is only for the terminally banjaxed.
Maybe next summer.
The last book I read fae your mammy’s hoose in glorious Galway, was your ‘teenage years’ diary that you so carelessly left laying about underneath the flair boards in your old room beneath the stairs.
I’m glad you finally got to grips with wee Frankie fae No 33, and his somewhat unusual sexual demands.
I can see how he really could have been a reet pain in the oul arse.
for years I avoided the Dan Brown books, never could see the point. There are a hell of a lot much more interesting facts about the Church, d’Vinci and the Templars. But this year I succumbed but not to the point of buying them, I got them in the library. And in my considered opinion they are badly written with a clunky plot and truly unbelievable characters. But I can see why they sold.
I’m the same Sweary – if the first page doesn’t grab me, the rest won’t either.
Jaysus it’s good to be outa that county. Hello, peoples. It’s great to be back.
I actually brought my teenage diary with me when I left my mam’s house, Jimmy. I can’t bring myself to burn it, but the prose is so awful I can’t actually look at it either.
I’ve never read Dan Brown, Vince. Swe.Ge was reading The DiVinci Code once, and his howls of mirth when realising that the mind-boggling puzzles consisted of mirror writing was enough to put me off. If I wanted Enid Blyton books, I’d raid the stash at my mam’s.
True, Rabbit. Very true. And it’s notoriously hard to grab me, as Jimmy Bastard discovered to his chagrin last Galway Race Week.
Go get the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It is the first of a series that is very clever. I guarantee you, you will like them.
i feel the same way, sugar. if i’m not hooked, i leave it, same with films. life’s too short… xoxo
In fairness to me, any woman covered in goose fat and feathers is gonnae be hard to get hold of.
I have to take my hat off to you though Sweary, there’s no many a woman who can out drink and out fart me when it comes to the porter.
…and apart fae that big oul dappled grey mare with the gone shopping eye, yourself was the best looking filly at the races.
Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
I’m very picky about what I read cos I can barely hold my attention on anything. Can never understand why people read shite though; bad shite, boring shite, reasonably decent shite that seems to never end, fantasy shite, shite shite…. takes you 5 minutes to read up on whether a book may be decent and unique, save yourself 30 days reading some useless pile of crap.
Forgot adapted into a decent film shite, no point reading them.
Oh, don’t be mean. Far worse are novels adapted from films. Ever read The Mummy: The Novel? No? Er … neither have I, honest.
I’m afeared I’m not, Bunker, but I find that there never was a brilliant artist that wasn’t inspired by convenient hallucinations tied in with starvation. At least that’s what literary agents keep telling me.
A trashy, beach-lit book is one thing, but condensed novels are another, far more evil beast. The former doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. If you’re not 5000 pages long, you’re not Les Miserables. Go read a pamphlet.
That second paragraph is exactly what I’m like. Earlier I was reading some short stories people posted on boards.ie, after reading the first line I’d go “pfft” and promptly close the tab.
It was a dark and stormy night…
I’m curious as to how one goes about condensing novels, to be honest. Does one take out all of the dialogue? Kill off the secondary characters? Get rid of all the poetic reams of scenery discription? Coz the last one I could handle.