I do not go in for 'my favourite author', 'my favourite composer' or indeed 'my favourite dinsosaur'* for that matter, not because I think that there is anything inherently unsound in such views but mainly because, like most things in life, everything is dependent on mood; sometimes the only thing that I want to listen to is Act III of 'Die Valküre' and at other times only 'Black Sabbath' or 'The Silly Sisters' will do. It is the same with literature, although, strangely enough, not with pictorial art. During any foray into the National or the Tate, both 'Modern' and 'British', I tend to go at breakneck speed through some galleries with scarce a glance, seen that, or dawdle so long in front of paintings that I have every danger of setting down roots.
I am even less interested in other people's opinions of their favourite books, music, art or sexual position, especially so-called 'celebrities' or at least the passably well known; are they endowed with some unique insight which I do not possess or, like as not, are they simply grabbing the derisory BBC 'appearence fee'; and running? No doubt the latter; no-one is watching anyway. It is somehow sad to see an accomplished novelist like P D James go through her favourite book as a child merely to pad out the schedules before 'Eastenders' or 'Emmerdale'** is ordained to appear.
While I was having lunch a few days ago, one such programme was playing in the background. Normally, I try to read over lunch but on this particular day I needed both hands free for one of those meals which involve a spoon in one hand and great chunks of garlic-rubbed French bread in the other; the sort of fine dining that gets you stared at in posh restaurants. I did not pay very much attention to the actual contents of the programme, which was scarcely in any doubt, hosted as it was by the execrable Anne Robinson (who, incididentally, I have detested ever since she used to write for the 'red-top' 'Daily Mirror', her 'face' lift just makes her more irritating) but it had one 'novel' aspect; books were chosen on a time line; favourite book as a child, favourite book as a teenager and so on. This seemed to me, if you were going to do it all, an eminently sensible way to proceed and so, against all my better judgement, I am going to do the same thing here. You will not learn anything that you do not already know nor will you be directed to books unheard of and so expand your list of 'books that I must read before I die'; I am a bear of very little brain and modest quotidian taste. I do it merely to crystallise my thoughts today; tomorrow I will have changed my mind entirely, like as not.
(Note: Unlike many of my peers, I did not grow up in a house full of books nor was I read to as a child; whether at bedtime or otherwise. There were twelve books on a shelf in the entire house. Eight volumes of an Encyclopedia, an English dictionary, two volumes of an encyclopedia of 'Home Maintenance' and a reference work on 'common ailments and how to treat them', all published in the early fifties by the 'Waverley Publishing Company'; no doubt a product of combining a rush of blood to my parents' head with a door-to-door salesman.)
As a consequence of this lack of books at home, I was at the mercy of the 'infants' school library and whatever the school deemed fit for the under elevens. As a result, there was much childhood reading in the manner of Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' and 'Secret Seven' books which I devoured as if they were in danger of spontaneously combusting in my hands, 'Just Willaim' and the 'Billy Bunter' stories, W E Johns' 'Biggles' but precious little else. It seemed that 'real' literature' was considered to be beyond the scope of 1950s and 1960's children. As a result, the only book which I can consider to be a favourite from my early years is 'Eagle of the ninth' by Rosemary Sutcliffe, I certainly read it more that once. It had everything a male child of ten could want; a 'missing' Roman legion, a quest to recover the 'Eagle', the standard, a bloody massacre and finally a happy ending, of sorts.
(I did not venture into the world of 'Winnie the Pooh', Kingsley, 'The wind in the willows', Dodie Smith, 'The four little grey men', Kipling and Ransome and other classics of childrens literature until my late teens and later when I earned enough by working part-time in a book shop to indulge myself with all of the books that I wished my parents had brought for me when I was younger, even if I had to read them for myself and not have them read to me.)
As a teenager, I was, if truth be known, a bit of a swot and a pseud. Although I was by nessesity reading three languages, English, and French and German (because I was studying them), I went out of my way to find 'unusual' books that by and large my contemporaries would not have read; Dostoyevsky, Bulgakov and Hamsun; Ibsen, Cervantes and Boccaccio; Dante, Capek and Levi. However if there is a book which dominates my teenage years (there are actually two) it is 'Lord of the Rings' and Camus' 'L'etranger' (The Outsider).
'Lord of the Rings', for my generation, was the 'must read' book; much as 'Harry Potter' is for children and teenagers nowadays. The late sixties was when Tolkien 'came of age' and was universally adored and admired by every spotty male adolescent in the UK. Endlessly discussed and dissected; we would inscribe dwarvish runes on our school bags along the lines of 'Led Zeppelin rock!'*** and challenge our peers to translate the runes; in our experience - I had yet to come across E R Eddison - it was unique; a true 'fairy story', but for grown ups not children, like 'The Hobbit' or the 'Narnia' chronicles. In its one volume paperback edition, the seperate three volumes in hard cover were out of my reach until my mid twenties when the paperback literally fell apart through constant re-reading, it had all the visual cachet of a novel to rival 'War and Peace' as well as being a thundering good read; probably the first book that I found 'unputdownable'. I read it at breakast, lunch, in the evening and long into the night until every last appendix had been devoured; and then I read it again (and again and again and so on ad infinitum)! I only stopped reading it on an annual basis when I was about 45!
Camus was an entirely different kettle of fish; it was a'set book' on which I would be examined, it was in a foreign langauge and, probably most importantly, it was philosophical in nature. I had yet to come across Sartre, although I would soon enough in the guise of a 13 part adaptation by the BBC of 'Les chemins de la liberté' (The roads to freedom), the books would come later, and it was, at sixteen, revelatory. In many ways, I came to the novel at the right time and at the right age. The counter-culture was in full swing and the stuffy, staid and respectable veneers of British society were being swept away by the young; we did not want to be "l'homme qoutidien"; like Meuersault we wanted to be "l'homme absurd" and enjoy everything that life had to offer.
That brings me up until about the age of eighteen, tomorrow we shall proceed with early adulthood and the rise of non-fiction; as Feynman once wrote: 'The joy of finding things out!'
* Probably Deinonychus antirrhopus****, a dromaeosaurid; think velociraptor only earlier and slightly bigger, almost certainly feathered and warm-blooded and the first dromaeosaur I encountered.
** British 'soaps' for any non-Brits out there.
*** Unfortunately, even Windows 'character map' does not include Tolkien's dwarvish runes, so I am unable to cite the actual text here. Robert Plant was known for inserting references to Middle Earth in his lyrics, notably 'Ramble on'
**** If I am able to find it, I will post my little scraperboard, after a drawing by Bob Backer at a time when he was still loth to come out firmly regarding feathers on dromaeosaurids .
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