Tag Archives: Ulysses

Anna is always taking the piss out of me. More often than not, it’s silly (“Did you see they put a picture of you in the Guardian?”Points to a drawing of an ape).  Every now and then, though, the joke is poignant.  And the truth is often told in jest, as funny lady over here never fails to remind me.

So it was that I discovered a gaping void in my knowledge of books.  I’m a reader, you see.  In school, when others were failing miserably and being moved to basement classes in “special ed.” because of bad behaviour or drug abuse, I was failing miserably and being moved into basement classes in “special ed.” because of Fyodor Dostoevsky.  I read the majority of Notes From Underground in Psychology class, secretly, the book hidden under the table.  Imagine the irony when I was caught; the teacher scolded me, saying, “You’re supposed to be learning about psychology!”

Dostoevsky, Checkhov, Bulgakov — I love them Russians!  My teens were spent writhing in the shadows of the Beat Generation, writing bad poetry entirely in lower case, dispensing with “and”, “the”, etc.  Salinger was my God; I’ve read The Catcher In The Rye 14 times, and Nine Stories (published in Britain as For Esmé, With Love And Squalor) ten times.  Rimbaud stole a week from my life which I’ll never recover, or even remember.  Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Bruce Chatwin, and even D.H. Lawrence have been dearer fellows to me than most friends — and longer serving.

But female authors?  None.  I’ve barely read any.  Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things, Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird are the only ones that I remember blowing me away … or remember at all, to be honest!  Shameful, I know.

Well, what are New Year’s Resolutions for?  This year, I’m going to plunge into the deep end and combat a long-standing error on my part.  I expect the results to be deeply, profoundly rewarding: I will only read female authors in 2010.  This, of course, excludes the Guardian, which I devour at lenght on Saturdays, and peruse during the week.  I will, however, be especially conscious of how much I enjoy Lucy Mangan’s columns.

Think of all the goodies I’ve been missing!  I have a few in my possession.  They’re a good start: An Ordinary Person’s Guide To Empire, by Arundhati Roy (starting in the comfort zone, so to speak); The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer; The Second Sex, by Simone De Beauvoir (you see, I’m doing a sort of penance for gender equality, and re-educating myself); The Color Purple, by Alice Walker; Nightingale Wood, by Stella Gibbons (as well as revisiting Cold Comfort Farm); as well as the works of female titans like Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, The Brontës, et al.

Here’s the panic: can I go a year without re-reading my old favourites?  No Catcher or Nine Stories?  No Black Spring or The Time Of The Assassins?  No Season In Hell?  Oh my God, I’ve only read The Brothers Karamazov once!  And Ulysses twice — and I only sort of got it!  What about all those lesser-known Orwell novels I’ve been meaning to read, like Coming Up For Air or Keep The Aspidistra Flying?  For Christ’s sake, I’ve just been given a copy of Anna Karenina (loves me those Russians!), and I still haven’t read the copy of Middlesex my best friend gave me for my birthday in 2006!  How on earth will I manage?!

Be resolute!

I’ll keep you posted.