The Czar’s Madman

Book Number 6: The Czar’s Madman, by Jaan Kross
Country: Estonia

Timotheus von Bock was declared mad by the Emperor, and for nine years was incarcerated in the icebound Schulusselburg castle with only a grand piano for company. Jakob, Timo’s brother in law, begins a secret diary on the day that Timo is released in 1827, relating his investigations into Timo’s state of mind, the reasons for his imprisonment, and his unexpected discoveries.

The Czar’s Madman is a historical novel, based on real occurences and real people. Through Timo, Jan Kross criticises the totalitarian regimes of the Czars of post-Napoleonic Russia, the repression of free expression, and the failure of the nobility to empathise with the working classes. An aristocrat idealist, Timo von Bock’s passion for proving the “equality of all human beings before nature, God and his ideals” led him to marry a woman from a peasant family in a practise-what-you-preach move. Later on, honouring an oath he swore to the Emperor to always tell him the truth for the benefit of the people the Emperor ruled over, Timo wrote a memorandum, the contents of which were deemed so shocking that the Emperor immediately proclaimed him to be insane, and Jakob agreed that to even write such a thing was insanity in itself, let alone allow the Emperor to read it.

The technique employed by Kross is highly effective – Jakob’s resistance to the fact that Timo married his sister, provided both of them with an education, a home, an income, all contrast with Timo’s enthusiasm for and belief in the equality of all men. Jakob is an example of the ignorance and unwillingness to change as exemplified by the typical man; he feels inferior to born noblemen, depite the fact that his education easily matches theirs, and resents the fact that his sister seems perfectly at ease in her new role as an aristocrat’s wife. Jakob really serves to illustrate that although Timo’s idealism is admirable, his conviction is incorrect – all men are not equal. Mostly, they’re just human.

It took me a few pages to get into this book, but once I did, I almost couldn’t put it down. A few other reviewers have noted that a knowledge of Russian/Estonian history would allow a deeper enjoyment and appreciation of the book, which I agree with. While I recognise the air of authenticity the diary format gives, no historical background information is included in the book, even on a page before the novel begins. On the plus side however, I feel as though I know more about European history (which isn’t hard, since I never studied it and barely know who Napolean was!).

For more on Estonian writers, click here.

To read or not to read?

The Observer ran an interesting article this weekend on Richard and Judy (a married couple with a daily entertainment show here in the UK) and how their televised book club is affecting the British bestseller lists – last week, three of the six books they recommend for summer reading took the top spots in the national bestseller listings. The book club is on weekly (I think), and each week Richard and Judy send out camera crews to capture the thoughts of some people who have read the book they are featuring on the show that week. The public thereby gains a range of opinions in colloquial language on a number of books, and can also refer to the website for additional information on the author and the book as well as quotations taken from the televised reviewers.

Anyway, the article got me thinking about the reasons people read (or not). I am passionately devoted to books and always have been. On the other hand, my sister probably only owns about three books, and she has those because other people bought them for her. I remember one occasion when the two of us were out shopping with out parents – we must have been about 11 and 13, and on the way home in the car, we were comparing purchases. Shopping was an exciting event for us; we each had a paper round, and earned about five pounds a week, and we’d save up to buy our individual objects of desire. Naturally, my sister always wanted cosmetics or clothes, which I duly admired. I will never forget the look on her face as she looked into my Waterstone’s bag at the book inside, and said, incredulously: “You spent seven pounds on a book?” then, as she turned it over, “You spent seven pounds on a poetry book?” There is some famous quotation I came across the other day (predictably, I cannot find it again) which expresses the opinion that a love of reading is developed through having books read to one by one’s parents while very young. All I can say is, my mother read books to both my sister and I on a daily basis until we learned to read by ourselves, yet one of us loves reading and the other does not see the point.

I’ve digressed somewhat. I meant to discuss the role of the professional book critic in promoting books, because it occurs to me that the vast majority of the reading public obviously do not pay much attention to what reviewers in national papers say, or possibly even the bestseller lists. I wonder if anyone really pays attention to professional critics; I very rarely do, unless it happens to be John Bayley, because I know I can trust his opinions. It is common knowledge that publishers routinely manipulate the national bestseller lists by buying up their own books in vast quantities in an attempt to bring them into the public eye via the bestseller lists (so clearly they believe in the power of the bestseller list), so sales rates are not always good indicators of the quality of a book. What, then, encourages people to pick up a certain book? Might more people read if reviews were couched in language that is less literary, or simply more colloquial? I am speculating here, but I would ascribe the success of the Richard and Judy book club to good old popular culture. There is an anti-intellectual trend in the UK (even among university students – Oxbridge students divulge the name of their university at their peril to a student of any of the other UK universities) which reflects negatively on books and reading. At the other end of the spectrum are those who scoff at the notion of something as untaxing as chicklit fiction, and don’t seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that entertainment literature has its place in the book world as much as the Romantic poets do. Given that one in five adults in the UK is ‘functionally illiterate’, totalling over 7 million adults, maybe Richard and Judy is the way to get more adults reading. After all, Nietzsche is never going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and who cares whether people are reading something light and fluffy, as long as they read and enjoy it? If parents like reading, they can encourage their children to read – it may turn out that some kids, like my sister, will never take to reading for fun, but everyone should at least be able to read.

I know there is no evidence that Richard and Judy are actually causing people who do not tend to read for fun to go out and buy books and start reading, but since people are actually buying books as opposed to borrowing them, and in sufficient quantities to top the bestseller lists, their show is clearly exercising a strong influence over vast numbers of people, among them likely to be some who generally do not read as a regular pastime. People trust Richard and Judy, and appreciate hearing what other ‘normal’ people think of books. It is an unprecedented phenomenon, and makes me think that maybe televised book clubs are the way forward in promoting reading. They are arguably the most accessible form of book reviews for the majority of adults, because there is no need to spend time on specific book websites, or go into a library and be faced with a bewildering array of literature with no way of knowing what you might enjoy. Instead, the choice of literature is narrowed down for you in your own living room, and you can even buy the books through Richard and Judy’s book club website. I say bring on the televised book clubs!

Book Meme

After reading many versions of the book meme on various blogs, I’ve decided to finally do my own. I do so love lists! Plus, I’m feeling very lazy today.

1. One book that changed your life.

A Long Walk To Freedom, by Nelson Mandela. I read it when I was 16 or so (not that long ago for me), and it opened my eyes and got me thinking in so many ways. One of my ambitions is to meet Nelson Mandela before he dies (because let’s face it, he’s an old man now), but I have the feeling that the closest I am likely to get is the Make Poverty History rally I attended in London, where he was a speaker.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once.

The entire James Herriot series. If you’ve never heard of these, they are the autobiographical stories of a vet in the Yorkshire Dales during the ’40s. It helps if you love animals, but these books are utterly fantastic – I love re-reading them. Each time I do, and I come across a favourite anecdote, it’s like catching up with an old friend I haven’t seen for ages. The characters are beautifully represented (I wish Tristan were one of my friends so I could marry him), and they are hilarious to read. It makes me smile with delight just thinking about those books.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island.

Probably the Bible…I tried reading it once, and I got as far as Noah’s age and gave up in disgust. I think if I read it, I would understand much more about this world. A desert island would be the ideal setting too, because not only would there be no other books to distract me, but I imagine that at that stage, I would be very receptive to the idea of God.

4. One book that made you laugh.

Any of the James Herriot ones. That’s cheating really, isn’t it? Ok then, any Discworld books featuring Rincewind the Wizzard.

5. One book that made you cry.

Iris, by John Bayley. It’s Bayley’s memoir of his wife Iris Murdoch, and he recounts everything, from the first time he saw her right up to how he coped when she developed Alzheimers. I love this book for so many reasons, not least because I always wondered if love truly lasts until old age. Now I know I have something to look forward to. I always hoped I would see John Bayley shambling around Oxford since he still lives nearby, but I never did. I don’t think I would have spoken to him, but I wanted to see the man who loved his wife so much and wrote such a beautiful book about their life together.

6. One book that you wish had been written.

Another James Herriot one. (Does anyone sense a theme here?)

7. One book you wish had never been written.

So many people have said that there are no books they wish had never been written. I think there are probably some books I wish had never been written, but as I can’t recall any of them right now, I’m going to say I wish I had never wasted my time reading Platform by Houellebecq. A friend recommended it to me, and it had a lot of rave review extracts in the front, and I expected great things. Instead, I loathed it.

8. One book you’re currently reading.

While I was in the library today, I picked up a book called Yan and the Pike, by Jun Machida. When I have kids, I’m going to buy it for them and read it to them.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.

Ulysses. It has been on my bookshelf for at least five years now, and I have tried a couple of times to read it, but always given up by about the second page *blushes shamefacedly*. One of these days…
(Or I could just read the cheat’s guide)

10. I’m not tagging anyone, but if you happen across this and haven’t done it, do it!

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends" – Dawn Adams

This week in the Guardian Books supplement, there is an interesting article and discussion on how our reactions to people are influenced by seeing what they are reading. According to a new survey, the genres ‘most likely to help you pull’ (or simply inspire a positive reaction in those around you) are 1) the classics and 2) modern literary fiction. This makes me very suspicious.

I’m about to be very hypocritical, but here goes: I distrust completely people who judge others on whether or not they read ‘the classics’ or by how many classics they have read. I admit, when I was 17, I went through a stage of reading nothing but classics for about a year, even going so far as to work my way through the entirety of Paradise Lost (much to the delight of my English tutors). My passion was partly fuelled by the desire to be ‘well read’ (pretentious in the extreme), partly by the feeling that I should somehow be holding my own in an undefined literary arena, and partly simply because I felt there must be something very worthwhile about reading these books, and that they were classics for a reason. I still read classics now, but with less frequency – there is simply too much else to read, so much so that sometimes I feel unbearably frustrated by the thought of all the books I want to read, and all the time I will waste reading books that for me are second rate, as I hunt for those elusive few that I wish I could continue reading forever. The thing with classics is that an awful lot of people read them or carry them around in their bags in order to prove their intellectual superiority (as evidenced by some of the people who have participated in the discussion on the Guardian site). I am wary of people who publicly proclaim their love for ‘the classics’, because I am only too familiar with intellectual snobbery and competitiveness, and distrust people who casually throw Tolstoy or Baudelaire into conversation in literary name-dropping games.

On the other hand, I have a lot of time for those who genuinely speak of the classics with real enthusiasm, and can articulate real opinions about what they have read. In my experience however, these readers are relatively rare. As Mark Twain said, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” I’m just deeply cynical. But – here comes the hypocrisy – I can’t help feeling a little impressed by glimpsing a man reading a classic (or anything I have read and admired). So many people just don’t read, and who doesn’t want a partner who can hold their own in reading discussions?

So there we have it. I hope I’ve managed to explain my views clearly enough – nothing against the classics, nothing against those who read them (after all, I’m one of them), but wary of pretentious fakers.

Finally: in answer to the questions posed for discussion on the Guardian’s boards, if I saw a man reading any of the James Herriot novels, I would quite possibly fall at his feet. If I saw a man reading and enjoying Houellebecq, I would be more distressed than I can express.

"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship’s sake."

Book Number 5: Embers, by Sándor Márai
Country: Hungary

41 years ago, a man took up his gun to kill his closest friend. Instead, he fled. 41 years later, he returned to face his old friend and resolve what passed between them.

Two old men nearing the end of their lives sit together in a castle and one narrates the tale of their friendship. The story passes from the glittering ballrooms of Vienna to the old aristocrat’s isolated castle in Hungary, from childhood through to adulthood, until it was abruptly suspended by the deception by one friend of another. The men had been close, and shared everything; what belonged to one, belonged to the other. Their friendship prevailed in spite of the differences between them, and was valued by each. Yet one did not understand the other, could not see into his heart, did not understand the differences in his soul.

The book is narrated primarily through the voice of the General. For 41 years, he has waited alone in his castle for his old friend Konrad to return, and while he waited, he has contemplated the meaning of friendship, the nature of their friendship, and the reasons for Konrad’s actions 41 years ago. The story is delicately unfolded, and explores the themes of love, loyalty, togetherness and isolation. While recounting the General’s carefully thought out conclusions, Márai explores the character of the old man and reveals it slowly and carefully through the General’s explanations of everything he has considered over the years.

I found that as I read, I was prompted to think about my own close friendships and what friendship meant for the people involved. Márai’s book is not an exercise in philosophy, but it is extremely sensitive and relevant to everyone. My enjoyment of it stemmed not from the final folds in the story being smoothed out, but rather from the insights I gained about my own life, inspired by reading this book. (Incidentally, the copy I read had the most beautiful cover.)