Despite my age I’m doing it more and more, I can’t stop, hour after hour after hour, until I’m sore, my hands, my wrists – from holding a novel. Because it’s reading novels that I can’t stop doing, great big slabs of it, whole mornings, whole afternoons, whole days, from dawn until dusk, lost in the best of written words, or I might mean found.
As a boy and early teenager I loved reading, except I don’t remember being voracious, that word that’s often used to describe someone who ploughs through books like there’s no tomorrow. But read I did and was moved. Jean George’s My Side of the Mountain, Stowe’s The Merry Go Round in the Sea, and Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were the novels for me.
In my late teens and early twenties, that first taste of university life, I had other things on my mind, no time for reading, no inclination even – I wish someone had thrust a tome into my hands and said ‘Read that, you oaf’. But I fell back into the habit when I moved to Perth to live for a while; alone, lonely, I wanted to know more about that far western place, and, miraculously, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet had just been published. I read those pages on the sand and in the sun, the teasing sea just there.
These days I have a library in my house; it’s in the smallest room, what would have once been the parlour, that place for visitors. There’s a coal-burning fire – sometimes, on the coldest, dampest, windiest days, I light a fire and that’s a heaven that’s hard to describe. Rising up on each side of the mantelpiece like columns are the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, rows and rows and rows of novels, my favourite of the favourite at the very top where the bastard cat can’t spray them.
It’s in this room that I like to spend whole days with the best of fictional worlds, just ink on the page. What magical lies! I’m visited; I go visiting. I’m transported, I’m opened out. I’m led away from myself so I’m walking in the shoes – living the exciting, illuminating lives – of others.
Logan Pearsall Smith, the US-born British essayist, wrote, ‘People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.’ How true.
I hope I’ll never stop reading novels.
Never ever.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 29 September 2012.)
11 comments
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October 6, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Gabrielle Bryden
I stopped reading fiction completely when at Uni – haha – probably a common phenomenon. But considering all the other reading you have to do then, it’s not surprising; though the distractions of youth is more likely the explanation. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch is one of my all time favourites, if not the favourite.
October 7, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, amazing how many people say that they stopped reading at uni. It would actually be a great time to read more! Glad you love ‘One Day in the Life…’ as much as I do. I haven’t read it in years – it’s about to be catapulted to the top of the pile.
October 11, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Tristan
Hi Nigel. I’ve been known to prefer reading over life, too – it can be a problem! Incidentally, I read Ivan Denisovich for the first time earlier this year, thoroughly enjoyed it and obviously a book of monumental importance. Some of the great novels I’ve read this year: Murnane’s Tamarisk Row, Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart and I’m in the middle of The Vivisector by Patrick White. My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard (maybe not technically a novel) left quite the impression. Loved Fish-Hair Woman as well.
Also, I’m wondering if this novel reading of yours might, one day soon, turn into some novel writing?
October 12, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Best to think about these things
Hi Tristan, yes, reading over life – it’s a problem…and a great big joy!
And your reading, as usual, is way beyond the borders of mine. And it’s great to see ‘Fish-Hair Woman’ on your list, though I haven’t read it myself – so I must.
As to novel-writing of my own, well, I do have ‘Remnants’, a humble novel published in 2005 (http://www.opentopublic.com.au/remnants_quotes.html), and some kind reviewers referred to ‘Fall on Me’ as a short novel, and perhaps reviewers will think the similar thoughts of ‘I’m Ready Now’. And of course there are those projects that I simply can’t – won’t – talk about. But how good it is to be asked this question!
And the question is a reciprocal one, I feel…
October 12, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Ah the joys of technology – yes it’s me who posted the comments above, and the nickname is a hangover from when I recently made some anonymous comment somewhere or other about something or other. Now you all know ‘who’ I sometimes post as!
October 13, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Tristan
Sorry Nigel! I should have said “turn into some more novel writing”.
Ah yes, the secret projects. They’re the fun ones, aren’t they? Yes, there may be a novel which I’m in the middle of a dead serious edit of at the moment – and maybe not! It’s a secret, after all…
October 14, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Tristan, yes, the things kept secret are often the most important. Particularly in reference to manuscripts. But I’m very glad that you’re writing – something ‘dead serious’. Looking forward to hearing more about that…at the right moment.
October 19, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Mark William Jackson
That library room sounds fantastic. And the beauty of books is that they’ll wait and classics don’t date, I remember growing with Copperfield, losing it with Gatsby, invading the mind of Raskolnikov, tripping with Dr. Benway, drinking with Bukowski. All in faded jeans and socks. Love it.
October 19, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Mark. ‘All in faded jeans and socks’ – brilliant. Just wondering: is ‘losing it with Gatsby’ a positive or negative comment?
October 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Mark William Jackson
I was referring to Gatsby’s somewhat fruitless obsession, and getting totally lost in the drunken debauchery. One of my favourite books, poetry even.
October 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Mark, despite being a fan of drunken debauchery and am somewhat intrigued by the aesthetics of the upper middle-class, I confess to being lost with Gatsby. Perhaps as I age and mature it might make sense to me, but so far it’s left me puzzled. Then again, I really am a simpleton.