URSABLOG: Booking Change?

“Read this book! It changed my life!” people say to me, knowing I read books, and – perhaps – wanting to change my life. I usually view their admonitions with suspicion and scepticism.

I am a stubborn, difficult, proud man, and just as I hate to be told what to think, I hate to be told what to read. I remember as a young man of 21-22 – whilst I was working in a pub in Coventry – a regular said to me: “You like books don’t you? Read this, it was really good.” I read it, and surprise, surprise dear reader, it was terrible. It was a dystopian science fiction novel where at the end – after the continents had bashed into each other to bring new and miraculous resources – the survivors, having had the foresight to pass through the cataclysm in specially designed capsules, turned out to be lonely, nerdish men who thrived in this brave new world and impossibly beautiful and pneumatic young women who got off on the same lonely, nerdish men. As a fantasy feeding the desires of lonely, nerdish men it was no doubt an important work. But if you have never heard of it, there’s a reason why: it really was truly terrible.

But yet I remember it; but it didn’t change my life except to resolve never to read books proposed by lonely, nerdish men in the public bars of British pubs.

People – despite the prevalence of social media – take great store by the written word. I suppose this is because as very few people actually write more than a couple of sentences in one go, the fact that someone has made an effort to write more, and sometimes much, much more, it must be important. However, just as less is more, so, sometimes, more is much, much less. An excess of length may be not as important as many people think.

“Don’t believe all you read,” my father used to say as my mother quoted an article from The Guardian to him. This puzzled her, because he read the same newspaper too, although I suspect that they read different parts of it. Having long given up reading that newspaper myself – I also hate to be told how to live, what films to watch, what food to eat – it puzzles me how people take for granted what people write.

In recent weeks the events in the Middle East have – once again – confounded the commentariat. Certain that a closure of the Hormuz Strait by Iran would drive the oil price up (and, although there is no direct correlation, tanker freight rates with it) the oil price did indeed go up in anticipation, as did tanker rates, and secondhand prices.

I was adamant that the Strait would not be shut, and I felt that the evidence supporting my opinion was conclusive and watertight: Iran lacked the firepower and materiel to do so, they were afraid of entering into direct conflict with the US, they didn’t want to further alienate or enter into direct conflict with their regional neighbours, they needed the income they get from their own oil sales to China and elsewhere, and so on. Taken together this was – for me – conclusive that it wouldn’t happen. But despite this, most people I spoke to said things like “they say” or “most people seem to think” that the Strait would be shut by Iran. Many paragraphs in respectable newspapers and on supposedly informed websites said the same. It all came to naught.

If this sounds like me showing off my superior intelligence and reading of world affairs, then it is, but before I explode in a shower of self-conceit let’s be clear: my opinion – written or otherwise – did not count and neither did I profit by it. I don’t have the wherewithal to short Brent (I struggle buying shares) and my risk appetite is so low that I only invest in the stock market when I have spare cash after buying wine and books. I also couldn’t make any commission out of it in the ship sale and purchase market because the time it took for the oil prices (and freight rates) to rise and fall was barely long enough to arrange an inspection of a ship. In any case how can you convince someone to sell a tanker when the market – with its attendant cheering bystanders – is moving the opposite direction? Maybe I should just try harder next time.

But, and this is a crucial point, the more I read, the less I know. And the less I know, the more I understand that this lack of knowledge cannot be improved by reading more. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong, but only acting – not reading, not talking, not listening – leads to tangible results. Knowing a lot of stuff is not an end in itself.

My favourite form of reading is novels, something I am led to understand, is something very few men do, even lonely, nerdish men. Men prefer non-fiction, even when the non-fiction is fiction: you will see many examples of these books in airport bookstores and on the beach this summer. Just as most self-help books only help the author in the form of royalties, so non-fiction reframes what we thought and understood to change our minds to the author’s view, maybe for royalties, maybe for other, more dubious and sinister motives.

But I believe that fiction, particularly in the form of the novel, opens us up to new ideas, different ways of thinking and different cultures. It helps us understand more, but as I said the more I understand, the more I know how much I don’t know. More than that, the novel shows us that life is, well, complicated.

“The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. Every novel says to the reader: “Things are not as simple as you think.” That is the novel’s eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster than the question and block it off. In the spirit of our time, it’s either Anna or Karenin who is right, and the ancient wisdom of Cervantes, telling us about the difficulty of knowing and the elusiveness of truth, seems cumbersome and useless.” Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel

This is worth dwelling on: the complex process of realising that things are not black and white, not right or wrong, but in the process of gaining this knowledge, we also get the feeling it is all a waste of time. I was right about the Strait of Hormuz, but so what?

“The intensely, stiflingly human quality of the novel is not to be avoided; the novel is sogged with humanity; there is no escaping the uplift or the downpour, nor can they be kept out of criticism.” E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

The novel is, just as the markets are, just as our lives are, ‘sogged’ with humanity. Reading, trading, broking, living is at times futile and punishing.

“Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life’s the other way round.” David Lodge, The Art of Fiction

I will not comment on my life imitating art or otherwise at this point, but I understand where he is coming from.

I have not only read all of the above three books (written by novelists by the way), but I have also read many of their novels. What have they taught me about life? Not much, if a surface show of success is any guide.

But as I begin to mentally prepare for my summer holiday (a few days on Anafi, Kimolos and Syros since you ask), I am starting to think of my reading list for those long- anticipated ferry journeys and days on the beach. What books should I take? Difficult but rewarding classics? Easy and entertaining page-turners? Some of those books that have been hanging around on the sideboard waiting to be read, but never got around to? Or should I try poetry: Seferis and Eliot (and Keats) to doze off to once my mind has drifted off in distraction?

Or should I cut out the middleman or woman and just wander around benignly confused about the world, trying to relax and enjoy myself? It would save on space in my luggage, but I suspect I would find this very difficult.

In any case I will be going on holiday alone. I would not want others to suffer my foibles: being on a beach, or in a café (or even a taverna) with someone who is determined to read is worse than being with a teenager glued to their phone. Reading, especially reading novels, is a lonely activity, and one that requires time and dedication. It can make a companion bored and even jealous of the characters dancing around on the written page.

I hope that I would never command or implore someone to read a particular novel in order for them to change their lives: only they can change their lives, and whilst the written word may set off a train of thought, or catalyse a certain course of action, it cannot change your life by itself; it is foolish to expect otherwise. When people ask me for recommendations on what to read – and they do – I mostly fail because I can never fully see inside their lives, or their minds, however well I know them.

That said I can neither see into the minds or lives of novelists (a fact which they are surely eternally grateful for), but their words may provide me fresh insights on my own way of thinking as well as comfort, enjoyment, knowledge and inspiration. But a way of thinking can be a cage that we imprison ourselves in; if we don’t act nothing will change.

I have read, and read a lot, and whilst I like the idea of being thought of as ‘well-read’ it is ultimately a fairly pointless compliment. It is like describing an alcoholic as ‘well-drank.’

No book has ever changed my life by itself. Books may have informed me, consoled me, inspired me, corrected me but change came when I decided to act, and then did. And that’s when the real messiness of life – with all its’ triumphs and disasters – really begins. And that, by the way, is the raw material for novels.

Simon Ward