An' then there's books: a lot o' them are just the same, just stuff, words, things to float before the eyeballs and divert, distract, fill time. I knows I done it, and will do it again. And then sometimes you learn something. And then sometimes you read something truly great. And maybe even some of them change your life - and maybe even for the better. Anyways, I'm a jus' wafflin' - what I really want to talk about is books I've read, and books I like an' books I hate. And - well, have you guessed yet if you can tell what the last book I read was? Yessum, that's a-right. Grapes of Wrath. Holy Moly, what a read! Them poor old Okies. Makes me mad for America and Californians and the whole bass-ackard situation that good ol' Steinbeck wanted to get us mad about (succeeds). Also makes me think of the noble poor, makes me want to be a noble poor, sitting here as I am in my veritable palace all alone and with nothing to do 'cept count my gold coins and stuff my face - gotta be eating every day at least double what a poor ol' Okie family of 12 had for their sustenance back in the day. And it sure ain't deep fried grease balls or whatever it was they et, lemme tell ya. Poor bastards! Med me feel it was happening right now.
So...Grapes o' Wrath: good book. And then you say that in our house, when there's people home, and you get talking about other good books. Roommate Diego's read a lotta the classics - even though he's Spanish, claims to be a simple man - and it's heartening to know we share many of the same views. Catcher in the Rye? Overrated. Just a young guy saying everybody's phoney and not really doing much (ha! sorta like my life). Ulysses? Don't even get me started. There ain't nothin' makes me happier than hearing someone say, Ulysses? Pile o' shite! What a load of nonsense. Motherfucker! Anybody who likes that book wants looking it, arseole academic nutjob freaks. Fuckin' hell: I tried the first ten pages and I gave up. Best book ever? Worst book ever more like. Garbage. And did you know the last chapter is something like 23 pages long and just one big long sentence without grammar, just some woman thinking random bullshit and then it ends? Ho man, that's your reward after seven-hundred-and-odd pages o' turgid bullshit claptrap.
Yup, say that kind of thing in my presence and you're bound to get in my good book.
Best book I ever read, I think, was David Copperfield by the Dickenster. Don't know what it was but I was hungry for them pages. Tried some other Dickens and wasn't quite so blown away - but DC? Wow. What characters: ain't read nobody what does characters like Dickens. So alive, that book: I guess 'cos so much of it is autobiography.
I also love whatever I've read of Kurt Vonnegut; sort of dig a bit of Kafka; thought One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest was awesome (though remember nothing of it, while knowing the film almost as well as I know the little insane asylum that lives inside my own head); Kerouac, of course, but mainly just On The Road - which gets me instantly jazzed up, infects me with its fever - though I can't say I'm too bothered about the rest of them, and don't see the glamour in a road that leads you where his did. Lovely Bones was a nice read: made me cry, which I can only remember one other book doing (a bio of Jimi Hendrix, when I got to a dramatised account of his death; I was sixteen). And then I was well into Raymond Carver for a while, though I kinda went off his minimalist approach and craved a bit of emotion - the kind of thing that oozes from the pages of all those Gothic and Victorian melodramas like Jane Eyre and Frankenstein and how comes nobody any more writes about characters that are endlessly suffering the greatest woe and misery ever visited upon a human being, the poor, miserable wretch? To Kill a Mockingbird was awesome too: read that while I was thinking I really ought to tick off the list of classics and see what they're all about. Read The Great Gatsby during that time too: but couldn't see what all - or any of - the fuss was about. Probably somethin' special back in the day - but like Catcher in The Rye, nothin' to be danced over.
You pull up a list of the best books ever and, dispiritingly enough, Ulysses is generally somewhere up around the top. Sons of bitches! Only people I ever met who liked it were egghead loser professors. I was supposed to read it for a uni course and, hero that I am, I did many forty-five pages or so before I gave the hell up. Be just as well to read a thesaraus. Bag o' shite. I also once carried a copy of Finnegan's Wake around with me for a few months while hitchhiking - only to discard it almost immediately upon opening when I finally got around to reading it. Read the other day an account of a chap who spent a couple of years in prison - really fantastic read - and he says in there somewhere that he had like two books when he went in - Finnegan's Wake being one of them - and though I guess he was desperate for stuff to do at times he didn't ever get beyond a few pages. Okay, so he was a prison-type bloke - but he weren't dumb. Says somethin' to me. Although, I gotta concede, Dubliners was cool. Shame he had to go all Etherington Noose.
Another book that's on a top-10 list I'm just a-lookin' at is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Anybody read that? Heard long time that it's supposed to be awesome an' I tried to get into a couple of times but, man, have you seen the way that guy uses adverbs? Unbelievable: not even twelve-year-olds or Dan Brown would be that retarded. Everything's "he said, irritatingly" and "the chaplain muttered, apologetically." Well I can't do justice to how bad it was - but seems like every page I turn to is so stuffed with 'em I really thought it had to be a joke. But it's not. Really, I couldn't read it.
And to mention Dan Brown: here's my sum total of words of his consumed: the last chapter of the Dan Vinci Code, and the first. Bloody awful. And no need to go into that one, 'cos everyone with half a brain knows he can't write for shit. Yeah yeah, it's all about the plot, I know. But it's gots to make a man angry when it's that compellingly bad. Dumbass successful millionaire motherfucker.
Oh dear: moaning again. Moaning about books I've read, moaning about books I've never read. Oh well, more fun in that I suppose. And the thing is, weirdly enough, I don't really like books all that much, don't possess the ability that some do to lose themselves in them: mostly it's just words. Or on the very rare occasion, when I luck into something like Copperfield or Grapes or Slaughterhouse 5. All the rest...One Hundred Years of Solitude? Just a family's name repeated over and over again. Midnight's Children? Yeah, it was all right, I suppose - certainly remember enjoying parts of it - but, I tell you this, my abiding memory of that book was closing it and thinking, wow, I've read all those pages and it means not a single thing to me: I finish it; I put in down; and I walk away as though the whole thing never happened. That really struck me: struck me that a supposedly great book oughtn't be able to leave a man with that kind of impression. And, yeah yeah, I'm sure it's all very clever and all the way it says somethin' deep about Indian Independence - but, really, if I wanted to know about Indian Independence I wouldn't wade through something that was all symbols, metaphors, opinions, all that shite - I'd read a bit of non-fiction, some proper bona fide history. What's the point in dressing it up as fiction? Other than as an exercise for your own brain.
I suppose them's the crux: that I actually much rather prefer non-fiction to stories. We laugh at guys who only read footballer's autobiographies and stuff - but at least it actually happened, isn't just the pie floating around in the sky of some bloke's head. A man makes up a story - but it's not the truth of the man, and I like truth. Me, I'm no good at separating the author from his work: s'why I ain't got time for no celebration of people like Sylvia Plath, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf - you end your life with your head in the oven while your children play in the next room you got no right telling people anythin' about how life oughta work. You flunked, baby: you're a failure. Who gives a fuck if you can string a pretty sentence together? It's making it as a human being that counts. S'why we shouldn't look up to Kerouac or Cassady neither - 'cos they flunked school too. Damn, I really thought I was gonna find a road that led to somewhere cool - but I don't think I'm gonna make it neither. Maybe writing's just something that sick people do. Maybe when you stop that's the sign that you've made it. Ever met a saint who wanted to write a book? A genuinely happy person? Hot steamin' shit, I've put a lock of stock in this barrel of wanting to be some sort of writer-type bloke - seems like such a joke of late - and I wonder, I wonder...was it all just...getting carried away? Have I gone wrong? Has it made me unhappy, led me down stupid paths? And, if so, could I let the notion drop? Could I...what would I be if I never expressed myself in type, with pen? No emails, no letters of texts or blogs or books: just what comes out of my mouth - or maybe not even that. Lately I been thinking I made myself sick with this insatiable monster that seeks to express every goddamn thing I got in my brain - but ain't the brain the enemy of peace? Would I give it all up - them writer's dreams - for a peaceful smile and a life like what normal people have, all bundled up and sane and not driven by THIS? I dunno - but I'm in the mood to give stuff up. I want it all to die. It's all just, as the man said, like so much straw.
Best book I ever read? Conversations With God: gave me shivers down my soul. And if I had to take one book to a desert island, that's what it would be. Something I could go back to time and time again. People say, blah blah this, blah blah that; how can that man be talking to God, maybe he's just making the whole thing up. I say, sure - quoting the book - but who cares anyway, it's wise words, it's how it seems to work, I ain't found no truer or better way to live (not that I live it). I read that book and it rang true: it got my whole body vibratin' and resonatin' with it: it made sense and matched up with my experience. And then - even greater testament to the truth - there were certain bits that I didn't agree with, but then some years down the line things would happen, and I'd come back and read it, and I'd be like, oh yeah, I remember thinking that was a crock - but after [life experiences] it seems like, bloody hell, right again. First three books are awesome. Fourth is nice too. After that, I thought he went off it a bit, put too much of himself in there - and, conversely, not enough, pretending instead to be speaking for imagined others when he didn't really know what those others would say. Last one though - Home With God - blew my mind, and gave me ever such a liberated feeling, thinking anything's possible, you really can do what you want - which I mostly seem to have forgot. Good stuff though.
Now, can I just say that all the time I've been typing this, sat here with the roof terrace door open, I've been listening to the non-stop drone of MOTHERFUCKIN' AEROPLANES! I really swear I am gonna go wild mad out my box if someone don't shoot the fuckers out the sky and blow up every airport in the land SOON. Oh, for a moment's peace. I long Long LONG for a place where I can't hear fuckin' planes, fuckin' cars, fuckin' radios and stereos and drills and saws and noise. Every one o' those things is a modern invention: for ten thousand billion years all creatures and dinosaurs and primitive ape-man humans were ignorant of such things. What? Two hundred years our technological bullshit noise pollution has been around: and I fuckin' hate it. Plane after plane after plane after plane. Blow up London! Take me somewhere, please, where I can't hear this shite. Oh, my poor dear sweet deaf old uncle. No wonder he smiles! No wonder he's the happiest of the bunch!
Books. Books I've read and liked. Books I've hated. Stephen King and Allen Dean Foster in my youth. Lolita. Bonfire of the Vanities. 2001. All them spiritual and self-help books. Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick. The Bible. Burn the books! Burn 'em all! Words just to...stop writing...never write again. Crawl away into a quiet nice place; forget pen and computer and newspapers; dig the trees and the sky and the soothing hot water; love your woman and love your babies; eat well; dance and sing and marvel at the rocks and the animals; I want to...go back to Mexico. I want to exit Plant Dust. I want to blow up the world - stop the world - and get off, get my rocks off. Just typing, just moving fingers, this stream of thoughts saying, put me down, express me will never ever end. I hear the next sentence before this one is finished. I don't know what I'm going to type next. I...
Thoughts. Wither comest though? Wither goest though? Who sent you? Who is making them up? Me? No, not me. I hear them. I observe them. I don't create them - for if I did, I would surely create some different ones. No, all I'm doing is dictating. You see! Even while I was writing that one, I was hearing this one. But who is speaking? Who is speaking these words? And what are you going to think of next, hm?
I ask that question and all thoughts stop. What are you going to think next? Except, he thunk this: and he thunk that. He thunk the whole thing. Who is he? And why doth he torment me so? WHAT IS THIS THING THAT DWELLS IN MY HEAD!? That speaks to me ALL THE TIME? That annoys me much as billboards and advertisements and all things outside that pull on my eyes, force me to repeat their message to myself? That is, even, getting me to type all this? Is it me? It doesn't feel like me. Or is it some parasite that has latched on - or am I the parasite all hanging bad smell around? And all these questions: him or me? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
Who am I? Where am I? Words. Voice. Feels like it's in my head. Who's head? The voice's head? The voice doesn't have a head.
Voice, where are you?
I'm here, in your head.
What are you doing there?
Just talking. Just amusing myself.
Why do you think it's funny?
I like making you mad.
Are you a demon?
Yes, I suppose I am.
An imp.
Yes.
You make me do things.
Yes.
You're screwing everything up.
Yes.
Why?
For fun. To stop you.
Why would you be answering these questions then?
I have to. Sworn to the truth.
Can I believe that?
Yes. No. Course not.
I'm gonna punch a fuckin' aeroplane any moment now, I swear! Blow up the world! This mad, mad world. If I had balls...I would walk away from it all. Thoughts would follow me: enticements. You've got to write, they'd say, you need a laptop. Sit down, they'd say, we've got some stories for you. But just a game of chess at first, this'll drive you nice and mad. Do that for a bit, and then get desperate, and then write something: it'll make you proud and happy and you'll want to do it more. More and more - it's a bottomless pit. The worm has got you: the enticements will follow. They'll give you stuff to do: you'll think it'll make good material. You'll dream of fame: poor, delusional you. You've gone mad and you need help and there's no help out there to give you. Live a while; get old; wonder how you wasted your youth, your life. Lie down then and die. And look back then and weep, your poor soul, your poor soul - all those dreams and schemes and the best laid plans and such good intentions - and what did you do, what did you do with all that time? But: nevermind, you can always come back again. Or can you? Or is that not just some mad thing we made up to screw you further down, further in, further up? Yes, you've gone mad and you need help and you're never going to get it. Iboga? Yes, maybe. Eat it. Eat it all. God mad, my boy, go mad...
Hahaha. And, just for good measure, heeheehee. A part of me digs all this - and another part of me thinks, hey, you've seen Se7en, remember all them crazy fookin' books Kevin Spacey wrote full of mad writing and think of how mad he was. Gotta do somethin' with your brain; gotta find a job. Four months without work. So little interaction with other human beings. Eight billion games of internet chess. And yet: you could toss it all off in an instant and be back.
A moment's silence.
Go outside.
You're housebound.
There's nothing there!
Remember York. Remember the trees. Remember the monastery. No boredom, no madness there - only in London, only in South Elmsall: only when you have this lousy computer and play chess and write all this mad shite. Go outside. There's nothing out there. Shop. Buy some eggs. Yes. That's all there is to do. Maybe you'll meet a person. Maybe they'll ask you what you do. Maybe you'll like their vibe and you'll start to talk to them and then you'll realise they're not really listening, they've got too much going on in their own heads, their owns worlds, they don't know that they're supposed to; they're a pretty girl but they drink too much, care only about hair and makeup, will fuck you up, will one day shrivel up and die too. All those sex tapes on the internet! Every fucking woman in the world is naked and fucking on the internet! All three and some billion of 'em. All gorgeous and beautiful and one day to shrivel up and die. And Wayne Mercedes: when will you give birth to him? He's there, isn't he? He's the one that's holding up the whole show. You write about him and there'll be no more internet chess, no more worrying about what the fuck you're doing/not doing with your life, no more overeating and thinking about girls and lazing the fuck around and chasing daft careers and -
But you won't, unless you will: you'd rather write several thousand words of shite and then spend the rest of your day buying eggs, Deal or No Deal, a whole 'nother loaf of bread, shitting and ignoring the housework and lazing lazing lazing -
You're hard on yourself.
I deserve to be.
You've had no help.
I've had plenty. I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I just don't do it.
That's the way of the world.
Why is it like that?
Laziness. You either is or you ain't. But really it's just fear.
Yes, I can feel I'm afraid.
Afraid of what?
Afraid that...that I won't be able to do it. That it won't be good enough if I do. That...I'll fail. And then what will I have? Now I have an always-future to-do list - but if I do it and it's not right...all I'll have is failure. And nothing.
And you'll have crossed the wilderness. Who knows what's out the other side.
Yeah, you're right, I know. I should. I will. I can't.
Such a lonely business trying to write, eh? Where's the people to read to? Where's the people to share it with? Musicians got each other, got their bandmates, got their audience. And maybe back in the day, before all this entertainment and the abolition of attention spans, people had time to listen. But now...?
Excuses.
Yeah, more excuses.
Lazy. Lame. Loser.
We'll live - somehow - and then we'll die, and then we'll look back on all this with such regret, such regret.
I need a poo.
Are you going to buy some eggs?
Yeah. Get outta the house. See what's there. Realise there's nothin'. Maybe shop even more - there's always shopping. I hope there's a Sainsbury's in heaven. Wish I could live there. Wish I could die there. Wonder if I'll ever get knocked off my bike and if she'd come to visit me if I did.
Need a poo. Going to stop now. Don't worry about me, I'm okay. I'm not smiling now but I'll bet you I'll have a big ol' laugh about this within maybe the next thirty seconds or so. Maybe it's even done me good.
Damn, them poor old Okies, sufferin' and starvin' and dyin' right here, right now, all out in California while fat men in white suits and Boss Hog cars chow down on drippin' hunks o' prime steak just a few miles down the road, and I sit here, in palatial comfort, and all that sufferin' and starvin' the world over and still it don't stop me to moan.
You can't compare yourself to others.
I need a poo.
Goodbye.
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