In this piece I completely went off topic and wrote about something other than music. I don't recall why; possible just because I couldn't think of anything else to write about.
Anyway, it's not always about music all the time...
June 16th
Charlie Parker-The Bird Gets The Worm-Complete
Savoy Recordings
Today, 16th
June is Bloomsday.
This year Radio 4 have been running dramatisations of the
novel all throughout the day and broadcast live from Dublin.
This has prompted
me to dig out from the back of the bookcase the copy of Ulysses that I bought a
long time ago. Looking inside the front cover, I’ve written the date-July 1991.
And I’ve still never read it.
I think that I once read the very studious
introduction and about half of the first page of the novel then gave up. I
really must give it a proper go. As it’s about half way through the year, I
should make this a sort of resolution-to read Ulysses before the end of 2012.
It would be good if I could say that Ulysses is the only book that I’ve bought,
but never got through. (Considering I’ve read some shit novels over the years
and generally try to plough through to the end of any book, just in case it
turns out to get better, the number of books I’ve given up on is small, but
potentially significant).
Glancing at the bookcase I can see two others, quite
easily, that are sort of glaring at me. Like Ulysses, I bought them a long time
ago and did start them before throwing in the towel.
One of them-Remembrance of
Things Past, a hefty tome, I even took on holiday with me. It was carted on a
coach trip to Italy in 1988-the only book that was given the honour. I got
about 30 pages into it before deciding that life was just too short. I did
bring it back with me though.
It has since sat on the bookshelf and moved
between houses a number of times, unread and was joined at around the same time
with War and Peace, which suffered a similar fate. Although Tolstoy never
managed to join me on holiday I have picked it up on a number of occasions, put
it in the car when embarking on a long journey with the full intention of
actually giving it a proper go. I’ve driven back with it unread and it joined
Proust and Joyce on the bookshelf.
The graveyard of unread classics. And for twenty years or so they’ve sat there
gathering dust.
The significant thing is that I’ve known they’ve been there all
this time and they’re sitting there, challenging me, daring me even, to make a
start.
It has become a battle of wills in a literary sense. I can’t bring
myself to throw them out-I’d never do that with a book anyway- and every time I
read something “easier”, say Nick Hornby, I have a feeling that even if I’ve
really enjoyed it, then I have taken the easy, lazy option.
Then I feel a bit
guilty, but instead of caving in, even if I read something more complex than
Hornby say, DeLillo, then I still can’t win, because I feel that Joyce, Proust
and Tolstoy (doesn’t that sound like an especially erudite firm of accountants
or solicitors-Joyce, Proust & Tolstoy?) are sitting up there, whispering
that I’ve still bottled it.
Even after all this time and the hundreds of books
I’ve read in the intervening years, I’m still not up to reading them. It’s the
fear of the first page I suppose.
Not writers block, but readers block.
or here in paperback http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X
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