Nick Hornby talk

It took a trip to Kuala Lumpur to finally get around to writing about the Nick Hornby talk I went to … was it last month? The month before? It’s all starting to fade. Fortunately, I wrote notes (like a good Blogger), so I wouldn’t forget the highlights. Also along for the talk was Francis Spufford who wrote The Child that Books Built. He was so spot on in many of his comments that I’m looking forward to reading his book also. There was also a gent named Blake Morrison (I think) from the Guardian. I thought this was pretty funny considering I had read only days before a very critical Guardian review of the book they were talking about for the evening (The Complete Polysyllabic Spree). Such are literary events. Apologies if I’ve gotten names incorrect – although I enjoyed the talk immensely, the set-up was pretty diabolical, and I missed a few key things - like names.

What would you say to someone who told you that High Fidelity was the best book they had ever read? Hornby’s internal thought on this was he could name 500 books that person should read immediately, all of which he considered better. But he noted, to do so denies a person their emotional response to a book. Spufford made the very good comment that it is completely unknowable which book is going to be right for a person at which time (which I think is witnessed pretty well by some of the discussions on LibraryThing, particularly those on “Awful Classics”), and that when we are thinking of “Good” or “Bad” books, we have to wonder – Good or Bad for what? The topic came up again several times throughout the evening, and Hornby made the good point that not only can you be a bad reader, you can also be “off form” as a reader, and that readers have to be on their game as well.

Talk moved on to Andrew Motion, and an article in which he recommended books that English school children should read. I do remember reading this and being vaguely horrified (perhaps because I haven’t read many of them?). Spufford made the good point that if you want to destroy reading for enjoyment in school children, given them The Portrait of a Lady and tell them to finish it by next Monday. Literary merits Henry James might have, however I personally agree that making them read The Portrait of a Lady is not going to endear them to English Lit for the rest of their lives. This was another topic of the evening, and later on Hornby floated the idea that perhaps if we were going to go to all the trouble of reading, it might as well be a masterpiece of world literature (and of course, how does one judge that?). However, the panelists all noted that there seems to be this idea that if we read great books, somehow we will become better. Is this true? And if so, better how? Morrison asked the question, when was the last time someone burgled your house and escaped carrying a copy of Middlemarch? Spufford postulated that books let you try out being other people, and at least for a time literature is loud enough to “drown you out”. Do books have the power to change you morally? Well, we all know people who are extremely well read and are utter bastards, Hornby pointed out.

There were also some topics which made me realise I’m not alone in some things. For example, I personally felt quite happy about Hornby admitting to all and sundry that every week he discovered some book or author that he had never heard of before. Also, to find out that he can’t read more than two books at a time, and even then one has to be fiction, and the other non-fiction. I also love the idea that if you’re not enjoying a book, that you should just put it down, which is of course one of the main points of his new book. Unfortunately I haven’t evolved to that stage of existence yet.

Anyway, it was in all a good talk, and kept the other half and I talking for hours afterwards, in particular about how you define a "Literary" novel. Also, how to tell Murder Mystery apart from the Detective novel - another sticky point of discussion. No point in leaving it all up to the experts, eh?