Greener Reading Accross the Pond

To quote the renowned scholar Cptn. B.F. 'Hawkeye' Pierce, M.D. "I am a life long anglophile. England is still the only country I know where any young man can grow up to be the Queen." Of course, thanks to Freddie Mercury, this statement is more accurate than it was.

Boy, isn't that something? A blog about books and my first quote is from a 30 year old T.V. show. I'm clearly working the educated crowd right now.

Anyway, I was talking about being an anglophile. I am one, of course. Most of the regular readers I know are anglophiles to one degree or another. Why is this? Well, like most nerdy Americans, I grew up on a steady diet of Monty Python, which I mixed up with a healthy dose of Blackadder, and a nigh obsessive devouring of every word ever written by Terry Pratchett, including phone numbers hastily scribbled on napkins. I could go further, it's amazing how many things I love are English in origin (including a nice pint of bitter, or as we call it in the States, ESB because the word 'bitter' is scary to Americans).

However, I did have the disillusioning experience that most anglophiles should have. I met a lot of English people, and worked with them. It is true, that there are a lot of amazing intellectuals to love in that country, and their cultural attitudes towards reading and authors seem vastly superior to ours, but just like us they have their tedious, boorish, narrow-minded people. That's why they're comedy is so funny, they have plenty of examples to work with. The point being, anglophilia is good for us in small doses, but don't take it too far, they are no more perfect than Americans, just different. Some of those differences are truly enviable.

Take for example the interview I referenced in my last post. Though I was frustrated by one part, I also really enjoyed it. The interviewer drew Rushdie out very well, and as an American, it fascinates me to see authors treated as public figures. We just don't do that here. We're much more likely to interview 20 year old actors about the interaction of east and west, than middle aged author's who have lived those differences and published important works of fiction.

The different attitude towards authors and reading in the two countries seems enormous to me. I've already admitted that I suffer from a 'grass is greener' attitude towards reading culture in England, but a glance at the Book sections of the NY Times and the Guardian, show that there's something there. The NY Times is almost exclusively book reviews, while the Guardian covers news about authors, the existence of upcoming books, and interviews with authors, as well as musings of all kinds on reading, books and publishing. And not just the Guardian, check out the Telegraph, too. It'd be great to get that kind of attention in the Times.

Of course, the Times has improved with their interesting, but not updated frequently enough for my tastes, books blog Paper Cuts.

Still, the English can annoy me. I am a huge fan of lists when it comes to books. I maintain lists of every book I read, and I love to check out end of year best of lists, as well as recommended reading lists of all types. That being said, this list of 11o best books, which the Telegraph describes as the "perfect library" seems disastrous to me.

These kinds of lists often do. I think the way they generally serve is to make us feel smug when we've read things on them, and smugger still when we've read things they missed, or have decided that something they did list is not worth reading. So, needless to say, I got a small buzz from having read, let's pick one at random, John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I loved, but I got a bigger buzz because they included the obvious choice of Jane Austen, an author I have no interest in. This set me off to notice just how heavily the list relied on English authors, which enabled me to look down on their list.

Of course, if you're really going to narrow down the 110 books that a person should read for a literary education, as an English speaker, there will be a lot more English books on there than American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander. After all, they've been writing for a lot longer.

That's why these lists are really fun to make though, it's a chance to insult those 'greats' you don't think are that great, mine for example would exclude Austen and the Brontes, and to include lesser known works that you really enjoy, I would include Flann O'Brien. It's also a chance to show the breadth of your familiarity. They include a section for Science Fiction, which seems to be much more acceptable in England. The big surprise was that they did not include The Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore, which has become the de rigeur means of acknowledging the growing importance of graphic novels without having to go around actually reading them. It's typically chosen because its more popular among comic book fans than Maus, or Persepolis, both of which are comics for the non comic reader, so it better demonstrates a familiarity with the genre, but more about that at another time.

Anyway, I started out about anglophilia, and seem to have ended up on book lists, but since I'm sure more lists will come out in future, so that I will always have material to play with, I'll go back to anglophilia, or rather, explain the connection. It's not just that I got the list from an English paper. It's part of that attitude. The New York Times produces, each year at the end of the year, a list of notable books. This is done very seriously, with the deep intention of demonstrating the Times' approval of certain works and authors. It's great for business, people buy the papers to see it (or check the website these days) and people buy the books when they bear that little stamp of approval on the cover. I think they give Oprah a run for her money, particularly as she does one at a time, while they do a hundred or so. Of course, I'm sure they're tied for how few people read the books after buying them.

The Telegraph on the other hand, was clearly being playful. They want to get you thinking, and start discussion. It's successful too, the comment thread on the list has just gotten started, and already people are throwing out what they see as omissions or inappropriate inclusions. After all, our favorite and least favorite books are important to us. They also have their own book blogger, who responded to the list with some very interesting thoughts of her own.

Not to get too down on Americans as being part of the books are fun crowd, I'd like to add that I learned of this list from the blog for Book Slut, which is a great site run by Americans. There are plenty of us out there, and the internet is giving us a lot more opportunities to communicate.

But really, don't the Telegraph editors recognize the importance of Joseph Heller's Catch 22? What fools!