You'll have noticed that I very seldom talk about books on this journal. This isn't because I don't read them, of course - though I do go through dry patches from time to time - but because I studied English Literature at degree level, and the idea of voluntarily sitting down at a computer and writing about literature is something I often can't get enthused enough about. If I'm having anything to do with literature, I'd probably rather be writing it myself than dissecting a novel, guessing and second-guessing the author's intentions (and getting fifty per cent of it hopelessly wrong, but still giving very thorough arguments as to why I think I'm right) and over-analysing it to the extent that I'd probably even confuse the scribe themselves. I'm quite happy to keep my ideas to myself these days. More to the point, I've actually met professional writers socially in recent years and I know for a fact that they chuckle to themselves about the more outlandish reviews or analysis of their work, which is enough to make anyone self-conscious.

Having said all that, I do feel compelled to write about the two most recent things I've read, purely because, for entirely different sets of reasons, they pose more questions than answers.

The first is Colin MacInnes' fifties novel-come-social dissection Absolute Beginners. This isn't the first time I've read this book. In my early twenties I utterly swore by it, and would regularly pronounce it one of the greatest things ever written to anyone who was prepared to listen. What "Absolute Beginners" does (I would probably say to half-interested friends) is show youth culture in the light it deserves to be shown. There is flash and transience, but the novel moves at a high speed, and everything happens at once, but everything happens for a reason. It's an accurate analysis of youthful love, ambition and lofty ideals with the appropriate comedown at the end. It's almost heartbreaking. And so on. Blah de blah.

Having re-read the book for the first time in ten years, I have to wonder what exactly I was waffling on about at the time. "Absolute Beginners" is, at best, a diversion. At worst, it's downright irritating, like "Nathan Barley" without any jokes at Nathan's expense. The main character loves "spending his loot" on consumer items. He's buddies with a man known as The Fabulous Hoplite, who doesn't bother much with trifles like the world around him and news, but does enjoy gossip about celebrities and fashion. Besides socialising with this camp individual, who is to all intents and purposes like the gay man off "Coronation Street" (and about as roundly depicted) the main character also cooks up ideas to become a success, one of which is to exhibit some photographs showing a teen love story as art in a London gallery, an idea so monumentally, teeth-grittingly awful that it should surely be treated as a joke or some sort of satire on the state of things at the time. Sadly, though, MacInnes doesn't seem to be asking this of us.

I'm perhaps being a little unfair and skirting around the central topics somewhat. Burbling slowly in the background and rising to a crescendo towards the end of the novel is the subject of racial disharmony and unrest in the capital, which contradicts the main character's beliefs that London is a tolerant, bohemian and unique city. He soon sees that it's as full of hate as anywhere, but the hate is kept much more under wraps away from prying eyes. Nothing, therefore, is as it seems, and this counterpoint is a huge relief against the candyfloss the rest of the novel offers. Apart from that, the whole "mod teenager in London" schtick is overplayed, and it's clear from the breakneck pace that MacInnes expects us to find it exciting that a working class teenager is hobnobbing with the rich and famous in elite bars. Maybe it was at the time, but it's a tired idea indeed now. What was apparently a contrary and subversive piece of work at the time has become something whose plot could easily fit into place on daytime Channel Four on a Sunday.

The other issue is that MacInnes writes like a journalist (which he was, first and foremost). His books tend to be fictional social documents rather than novels. His dreary dissection of multi-cultural London "City of Spades" was the biggest victim of this, reading more like a badly paced, detatched catalogue of events than a novel. You could almost imagine the pages coming off a Reuters dot matrix machine. And, like any grubby journalist, you can tell he'd quite like you to be shocked in most of his work. He attempts to titilate, but his bait is rather ordinary. There's gay sex! White people having sex with black people! Prostitutes who are proud of the fact they're prostitutes! And so on. That none of these things are very shocking anymore makes the whole experience seem rather more hollow, to be honest. This is what people mean when they declare works to be "dated", and under such circumstances it's not unfair to use that description.

Perhaps I wasn't being terribly honest with people about why I loved the novel first time round. I've a feeling I enjoyed it not as a work of art, but as a reflection of my own ambitions, whims and desires. Stuck in Portsmouth and dreaming of a media career in London, it probably made the possibilities look seductive and easy, and made youth seem something to be prized - and that was certainly something I had. Anyway... "Absolute Beginners" there. It's one of Paul Weller's favourite novels of all time, and that is true.

The other novel I wish to write about was a gift to me from my friend Jon. ( Read more... )