Bitty Ruminations #32

DEC 15 – There’s something about cold weather — even if this weather will be described as “cold” only by residents of Chennai, perennially baked and browned by heat and humidity — that makes me want to read. I laid hands, recently, on Emma Donoghue’s Room, and before beginning this Booker-shortlisted book, I wanted to race through something quickly, in deference to my long-established precept that I alternate stories that are the on-page equivalent of organically farmed spinach with “easy reads,” aka “guilty pleasures.” What piece of trash shall I make mulch of my mind with? The bookshelf was pregnant with promise. Ludlum? No, too fresh in memory after the Bourne movies. Grisham? Robbins? Not in the mood (and probably not in the age-group either). And then, a tattered copy of The Thorn Birds presented itself. “Why not?” I murmured to myself as I recalled my long-long-ago engagement with this epic bodice-ripper, which practically begged to be rechristened with a less pretentious title more befitting its aims and ambit — say, The Princess and the Priest.

The initial pages — those sprawling descriptions of the equally sprawling sheep station known as Drogheda — were lush and lovely. But once the actual story got going, I lost interest and began to skim. I finished the 600-page book in three days. The power of easy reads, I think, is limited to the first easy reading. (The honourable exception, of course, being Wodehouse, whose prose never fails to enrapture even on the hundredth encounter. From Full Moon, this description of Colonel Wedge’s alarm upon running into his bucolic brother-in-law, Lord Emsworth, by the pigsty: “The shock of discovering that what he had taken for a pile of old clothes was alive and a relation by marriage caused him to speak a little sharply.” Can this stuff ever get old?) Once you know how things play out, once you’re shocked and surprised and satiated by the story, there’s nothing more. Meggie and Father Ralph — oh, jump into bed already! I have Room waiting.

PS: But here’s a more involved look at why we love bad writing. “Most people who read a lot also read to satisfy a wide spectrum of moods and hankerings, and sometimes trash (provided it’s sufficiently engaging) is just the ticket.” And here’s the article referred to in the Salon piece prior, somewhat snobbishly titled Are Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown a match for literary fiction?. I must, however, register my protest about the author — him of the Microsoft-friendly name of Docx — lumping Brown and Larsson in the same barf bucket. Larsson at least can conjure up a mood.

PPS: Speaking of Stieg Larsson, here’s a masterly skewering by Nora Ephron, whose wicked eye here suggests a talent entirely removed from her bland rom-com movie universe.

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