the path back

From time to time you stumble across a few blogs-usually American- dedicated to books and book reading. The curious thing is that you've usually not even heard of, let alone read the books mentioned. The seriousness of book readers. Lists, 'challenges', reviews, analysis, criticism, spinning out not just a secondary literature but fragments, quotations, wild juxtapositions, churning out future anxieties.

Book clubs and the sharing of books. There's something deeply unsettling about that, incestuous even. Like some sort of underground occult order with its own horrifying rituals of domesticity and chuminess. Reeks of communism and the invasion of the private world, or of the mid-afternoon dullness of mid-America, middle England, middle everywhere. Or the sickly-sweet human warmth found in the catacombs. Probably says more about you than anything else, on second thoughts.

Images: mostly of women drinking coffee. Do men form book clubs? (Actually, two friends did, and all they did was get drunk and read chunks of the Baburnama). The pretentiousness of men reading "difficult" books. Angst, existential despair, edgy or profound. None of that girly stuff for them! But the wives! Now, there's a different kettle of fish for you. Oh, Jesus! Get the husbands involved as well...couldn't you summarize it for me or:

"What do you think of it?"

"But I haven't read it"

"Still, you must have something to say"

The husbands, scampering for safety. 'Is she going to use this silence against me for later, hold it against me. I can see her storing up this reference for the future'. Z, the poor sod, is forced to read reams and reams of Cohelo and pretend it's deep. He's a great fan of Jane Austen too, but with a wife who inspires fear with a click of her heels, I don't blame him. Later, he works it all off with an hour of squash and an hour pumping iron. Grit your teeth and bear it, man!

An interview with Roth. Same old, same old. He keeps on writing about mortality and they keep on asking him about it. But before he's even opened his mouth to answer she's smiling away, nodding, won over. That's what success does for you. Still, better than that blubbering idiot, Mark Lawson.

John Cheever is not easy to find in London. Three basements on Charing Cross. Nada. Jesus's son. You've got to be joking. At Foyles-or was it Blackwell's, you tried to read some Celan but your heart wasn't in it. Instead, you listened to the conversation of some woman sitting directly behind you. Trying to hook up an "English-Italian" woman with five kids with "Anthony".

"Isn't that too many?", the man on the other end of the line asked.

"Well, he's got his own baggage with all those Thai girls".

Anyway, did manage to pick up Wolf Solent and make my way back to the Wright's Bar for the 20-year re-uinon. Near St. Giles you saw two Chinese men, vociferously arguing with one another. One of them held the other by his forearm and gave him a good shake. The Church itself is usually closed. You've never actually seen anyone go in come to think of it and there are lots of imposing signs outside, warning people to clear off. Lots of drunks and drop-outs, the half-mad and homeless; there they are, dishevelled, slumped on wooden benches in the adjoining fields, burnt-out, stinking to high heaven, speaking in tongues, waving off imaginary visitations, as if they were so many flies. The hierarchy of souls persists, even without religion. The Church isn't in the business of saving souls any more, but these quiet places in the heart of the city still offer a kind of refuge from the fierceness of the sun and raging storms.

St. Dunstan's was closed.

Everyone has visibly aged, you think to yourself. You have to blink twice to recognize one friend. No-one says anything, but everyone is quietly thinking, with suppressed horror: Jesus, what happened to you! Here we are, a banker, an accountant, a government minister, a wealthy businessman, and a bureaucrat. All have done quite well on the surface of things, but below the surface, if you dare to look at it, there's that same tired and world-weary look that you saw on the faces of the drunks. There's something awful about reunions, about paths that always lead back.