FROM DICKENS
TO NIKKI SIXX.
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Three years ago, Nick Hornby agreed to give The Believer a monthly record of the books he read; since then, his column has forever altered the world's understanding of the private lives of celebrated British novelists—the awkward barbershop visits, the constant soccer-watching—and offered us innumerable entry points into literature of every type, except possibly sci-fi/fantasy. Hornby's column has been called "terrific," "wonderful," and "hysterically funny" by, respectively, Salon.com, the U.K. Guardian, and NPR, and they're all right—it's consistently one of the best things in the magazine. And now, in Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, 14 months of "Stuff I've Been Reading"—comprising most of 2005 and much of 2006—can be found in one definitive edition, saved from the tyranny of the magazine rack. His earlier columns, too, are still available, in the form of The Polysyllabic Spree; for sheer volume of wit and insight, there is no better resource than both books together. Below, an excerpt.
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An Excerpt From
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt.
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The truth is that two books in a month isn't so bad. There are lots of people who don't get through two books a month. And anyway, what would happen if I had read no books? Obviously, I'd lose this job (although that's assuming one of the Spree noticed). But apart from that? What would happen if I read no books ever? Let's imagine someone who reads no books ever but polishes off every word of the New Yorker, the Economist, and their broadsheet newspaper of choice: well, this imaginary person would do more reading than me, because that's got to be a couple hundred thousand words a week, and would also be a lot smarter than me, if you use that rather limited definition of smart which involves knowing stuff about stuff. The New Yorker has humor in it and also provides an introduction to contemporary fiction and poetry. So the only major food group not covered is starch: in other words, the classics. And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun. Persons of Letters have to read things like Candide or they're a few letters short of the whole alphabet; book lovers, meanwhile, can read whatever they fancy.
I picked up Candide because my publishers sent me a cute new edition, and though that in itself wouldn't have persuaded me, I flicked through it and discovered it was only ninety pages long. Ninety pages! Who knew, apart from all of you, and everybody else? A ninety-page classic is the Holy Grail of this column, and when the Holy Grail is pushed through your letter box, you don't put it on a shelf to gather dust. (Or maybe that's exactly what you'd do with the Holy Grail. Is it ornamental? Has anyone ever seen it?) Anyway, I have now read Candide. That's another one chalked off. And boy, does Voltaire really have it in for Leibnizian philosophy! Whoo-hoo! Now, there's a justification for reading Candide right there. Many of you will have been living, like Leibniz, in the deluded belief that all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds (because you believe that God would have created nothing but the best), but I have read Voltaire, and I can now see that this is a preposterous notion that brings only despair. And it's not only Leibniz who comes in for a kicking, either. Oh, no. Corneille, the Jesuits, Racine, the Abbé Gauchat, Rousseau .... Just about everyone you've ever wanted to see lampooned in a short novel gets what's coming to them. You lot are probably all familiar with the Abbé Gauchat, the Theatines, the Jansenists, and the literary criticism of Élie-Catherine Fréron, but I'm afraid I found myself flicking frantically between the text and the footnotes at the end; I was unhappily reminded of the time I had to spend at school reading Alexander Pope's equally mordant attacks on poetasters and so forth. Literary types will tell you that underneath all the contemporary references, you will recognize yourself and your world, but it's not true, of course. If it's this world you're after, the one we actually live in, you're better off with Irvine Welsh or Thomas Harris.
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