3.2 .06Pond Scum: Books Do Furnish a Mind
By Steve Finbow
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Research for this has taken weeks – backbreaking, step-climbing, database-crunching work. I have dissected, defiled, and dusted down my book collection. The idea came to me after reading an article in The Guardian about how the world is becoming Americanised (Americanized). Well, I know that. That is why Pond Scum exists. Then I looked at my book collection and thought, ‘Hold on. I wonder how many American and British writers I have in my library?’ I don’t have a room that functions as a library but most of the space in my flat is taken up by books, shelved into fiction – Abbey to Updike in my living room; fiction – Vidal to Zola, philosophy, poetry, drama, and non-fiction in my bedroom; anthologies and my complete set of McSweeney’s journals reside in my walk-in wardrobe (yes, I do have one of those).
By Nicholas Allanach
There are anomalies: Why are all Paul Theroux’s books in the fiction section? Why are all Joan Didion’s books in non-fiction? Why, for two years, did V.S. Naipaul’s fiction and non-fiction find themselves separated? Why are my collections of William Burroughs, Martin Amis, and Michel Houellebecq on the floor under my dining table? It is to do with space – or lack of. Most people who stay at my flat for any amount of time, at some point, will catch me re-arranging my books; finding a nook for a Nabokov, a cranny for a Carver, or a gap for a Goytisolo. Then there is the anal side of my cataloguing: all books by an author must be on one shelf. So, Murakami, Nabokov, and Naipaul all inhabit one shelf; they do not spill down from the one above or, in turn, down to the one below. The library is like a Rubik’s cube – and I am crap at solving those.
I used my blue ring-bound notebook, the one in which I write book reviews, and used the four-line-with-a-diagonal-slash-for-five counting method for documentation. Each count represents one author and does not take into consideration how many books I have by that author – so Martin Amis (twenty-eight books – English and American editions plus first editions and paperback reading editions) registers the same score as Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (one book – and you all know which one). Taken from fiction, non-fiction, poetry, philosophy, and (not much) drama – the results are fascinating. Well, to me, they are. I have 193 American authors in my collection; if you lump in Canadian authors, North America accounts for 198 authors. Second to that comes UK authors with 146; and if you include Irish writers, the British Isles registers 152. Third, are the French with an ooh-la-la 37. Then a Germany-Austria alliance marches in at number four with 13. At five, Italy surrenders up 11. Sixth, Spain with a bullish eight. Seventh, Russia and South Africa with an aardsteppe seven. Australia, eighth with a bonzer four. Czech Republic/Slovakia are ninth with a beery three. Argentina, Portugal, and Japan tied tenth with… er… two each. Then come Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Columbia, Korea, Norway, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Israel, Poland, the Netherlands, and Belgium with one apiece. What does this mean? Well, it means I prefer American literature to British. Do I? I would say my favourite fiction authors on either side of the Atlantic are T.C. Boyle and Martin Amis. Non-fictionally it would be Hunter S. Thompson and Christopher Hitchens. It is obvious. Both Amis and Hitchens, apart from being best buddies, are Yankophiles. It also means, to my horror, I have no books by African writers north of South Africa. No works by writers from the Indian sub-continent – if I count Salman Rushdie as British. There are other problematic authors. Do I count Nabokov as Russian or American? Is Beckett Irish, British, or French? And what about V.S. Naipaul? OK. I needed a check, a control, a second opinion. This is how it went.
I whipped out my Moleskine notebooks. I have been using these for years to copy quotes, take notes, list books to buy or that I have read, and jot down phone numbers – phone numbers without names, I might add. I write fiction in red school notebooks, and non-fiction on my iBook. Moleskines have a back pocket where you can keep scribbled-on napkins, tickets, and just stuff. I went through them and created a database of books I have read over the last three years.
Frequency: how long between books do I move from British to American? Over how long a period do I read fiction or non-fiction? Let us see. The longest period of reading fiction is nineteen books. The longest period of reading non-fiction is seventeen books. I read books by American authors forty-three times in a row – only stopped by the awesome figure of Georges Perec. Correspondingly, I have only read six books by British authors one after the other – and that was during my addiction to William Trevor, plus a Colm Toibin, and both are actually Irish. Not reading either UK or USA authors has only stretched to six books – four by Juan Goytisolo, plus Paul Smail, and Frederick Beigbeder.
Here are my top twenty-two writers, with five or more books read over the last three years – in reverse order: William Trevor, James Sallis, Chuck Palahniuk, Cormac McCarthy, Jonathan Lethem, David Sedaris, Julian Barnes, Michel Houellebecq – five; V.S. Naipaul, Milan Kundera, Christopher Hitchens, Juan Goytisolo, Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Ames – six; Paul Auster – seven; Elmore Leonard and Patricia Highsmith – eight; Philip Roth – nine; J.M. Coetzee and Vladimir Nabokov – eleven; and T.C. Boyle – twelve. This is surprising. I am not a great fan of Palahniuk, and I am going off Lethem. The Highsmith books I read while convalescing. Elmore Leonard I use as a literary sorbet between heavier courses. Nabokov, Bellow, and Roth are constant re-reads. T.C. Boyle and David Sedaris are relatively new discoveries. I am sure I have re-read more Martin Amis, P.G. Wodehouse, and Evelyn Waugh over this period – maybe I forgot to record them.
In my calculation, I have read – in the bath, in beds, in pubs, in cafes, on trains, in planes, and on my sofa – 468 books in three years. That works out at three books a week or a book every 2.3 days. I hope this provides an insight into my life and mind. I have a sneaking feeling it probably shows what you all may have long suspected – I have no friends because I am a pretentious tosser.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
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Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2006 Me Three
