The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life (36 page)

I finished that lot in about three months, quite an achievement when you are holding down a full-time job and trying to raise a young family, like what I do. I enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to extend the list to fifty books and give myself until 24 November this year to read them all – one year to the day since I embarked on the original List of Betterment. I have started this blog so I can share my thoughts on all the books I read this year, plus anything else that springs to mind. I hope you'll join me!

Today is Day 1 of reading:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

‘God is a woman, and she wants me to read.'

Jane Eyre

Last week, I finished
Vanity Fair
by Thackeray and was wondering where to go next. There was an article in the paper about reading habits and
Jane Eyre
was mentioned as many women's favourite book. (Men nominated
The Outsider
by Camus and
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Márquez.) Then, on Saturday, my friend Penny asked if I was going to attempt
Jane Eyre
, because it was one of her favourite books and her (all-female) book group had just done it. So I was flicking through
Jane Eyre
, umm-ing and err-ing, when I noticed that Charlotte Brontë dedicates the book to . . . William Makepeace Thackeray. So mote it be!

Today is Day 2 of reading:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

Children in mortal peril, beatings and punishments, strict religious dogma: based on the first hundred pages,
Jane Eyre
is a period misery memoir, although in all likelihood Dave Pelzer never uses words like ‘hierophant', ‘deglutition' or ‘contumelious', i.e. ‘
he pushed her away with some contumelious epithet
.' This reminds me of a true story about the British girls' comic
Tammy
in the 1970s. Their most popular serial ever was called ‘Slaves of War Orphan Farm' because, according to the editor, it was exactly what the comic's young female readers wanted to read – tales of orphans who were kept as slaves on a farm during a war. Some things you never grow out of.

Today is Day 3 of reading:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

What would happen to the Brontë sisters today on the evidence of their novels alone?
Jane Eyre
and
Wuthering Heights
and
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
make a compelling case for a dawn raid on Haworth Parsonage by West Yorkshire social services.

Today is Day 4 of reading:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

Today is Charlotte Brontë's 193rd birthday. Had she lived, she would have been very old.

Today is Day 8 of reading:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

Finished
Jane Eyre
this morning. A dramatic, elemental and weird book which still has the power to shock. I wish to draw your attention to the character of Mr Rochester, one of the great romantic heroes of English literature. What type of a man is he?

Edward Rochester is generally arrogant, surly, foul-tempered and strikingly ‘ugly' – not my word but that of Jane Eyre, who cannot stop going on about it. At the time the events of the book take place, Jane is barely eighteen; Rochester is nearly forty. He has had a string of mistresses, of
which he says he repents (but he would say that, wouldn't he?). He may or may not have had a child, Adele, with one of them. He leads another local woman, Blanche Ingram, to believe he is seeking to marry her, without having any intention of doing so. Such caddishness is just for starters.

Rochester keeps his first wife, Bertha – who is clinically insane – locked in a room in his attic, in the care of a negligent and alcoholic nurse. In order to uncover Jane's true feelings for him, he dresses up in women's clothing as a gypsy and pretends to tell her fortune. He withholds all the stuff about the mistresses and the crazy woman in the attic, even when the crazy woman a) tries to burn him alive in his bed, b) stabs her own brother and c) creeps into Jane's room with the intention of attacking her. Still he says nothing. Instead, after the attempted fratricide, he makes Jane mop up the blood. Rochester then attempts to lead this same ignorant and sheltered eighteen-year-old into bigamy. On her wedding day, the ceremony is disrupted in the most humiliating manner imaginable. Only at this point does Rochester see fit to disclose to her the truth about the mistresses, the brother-in-law, the locked-up lunatic wife, etc. He then suggests that instead of getting married, they abscond to the continent and live together in sin. When Jane bravely says no, he threatens her with violence.

They decide to spend some time apart.

Happily for all concerned, Bertha breaks free of the attic again, starts another fire and leaps to her death. It is implied that the mad woman was syphilitic all along. So maybe Rochester is too. After the fire and his first wife's suicide, one of the great romantic heroes of English literature
ends the novel as a broken, one-armed blind man with undiagnosed syphilis and an innocent new wife, i.e. Jane Rochester, née Eyre.

These are just some of the qualities that have commended this total contumelious epithet to generations of female readers.

Philip Roth: an apology

I am reading
Everyman
, a novella by Philip Roth. This will be the fifth of Roth's books I have read in full. However, there are several acquaintances of mine who are under the impression I have read every word the great man has written since
Sabbath's Theater
in 1995. They are under this impression because I LIED to them.

The worst example of this LYING would be to my friend Alan. I recommended
American Pastoral
to him despite having got no further than page 50 or thereabouts. Alan took me at my word. He read
American Pastoral
from cover to cover and thought it was superb. Then he read
I Married a Communist
and thought that was superb too. What did you think? he asked. Oh yes, I replied, magnificent. But I had not managed more than fifty pages of
I Married a Communist
either. The relentless excellence of the prose was exhausting.

As time has gone on, I have compounded the original offence over and over again. Every time Philip Roth publishes a new novel, Alan and I discuss it. Sometimes I have read the book, sometimes not. On the occasions when I have, I remind myself to compare it only with the books I have actually read, for fear of being caught out in my shameful LIES, not wanting Alan to find out either that I bullshitted him about
American Pastoral
and
I Married a Communist
or that I am still bullshitting him a bit even when telling the truth, and so I overcompensate by extravagantly praising Roth's every paragraph, semi-colon and full stop. Gosh, I think as I hear myself enthuse and dissemble, I
love
Philip Roth!

Alan, I am sorry. Today the LYING stops.

(And sorry to Paul for making you read all 650 pages of
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon, which I believe I said was ‘incredible', despite not having read even one of those pages – although in my defence I had read the cover. Fortunately you liked the book. At least you said you did. Maybe you hated it and didn't want to hurt my feelings. Or maybe you were lying too. I understand. It is a very long book.)

So, for the record, here are the Philip Roth books I usually say I've read, followed by the TRUTH.

• Portnoy's Complaint
  – yes. In 1990. Didn't really understand it.
  
• Sabbath's Theater
  – no. But Mrs Bast has read it. I base my opinion on hers.
  
• American Pastoral
  – first 50 pages. Incredible.
  
• I Married a Communist
  – first 50 pages. Incredible, monotonous.
  
• The Human Stain
  – yes. This actually is one of the finest novels I have read in recent years, perhaps the best. The confrontation on the frozen lake near the end of the book is exemplary in its craft, unpredictable five pages before it occurs, yet thematically inevitable and utterly satisfying once it has happened, and I am not just saying that to prove I finished
  The Human Stain
  . But I did, and it is.
  
• The Dying Animal
  – very short, so polished this one off no trouble. Can't remember anything about it though.
  
• The Plot Against America
  – curate's egg, but one I consumed whole. Essentially a highbrow's episode of
  The Outer Limits
  . Told people I liked it more than I actually did in order to appear consistent.
  
• Exit Ghost
  – no. Definitely will though.