The avoidable horror of sociability

I am not, as a person, noted for any real sense of 'sociability'. This, let me hurry to add, does not suggest that I by any means eschew gatherings with like-minded, highly educated personages of the correct calibre and aesthetic sensitivity. Such coteries may be informative and even pleasant in the right circumstances.

No, I am in fact referring to those 'events' that one is coerced into attending for no other reason than to appear sociable in the eyes of such intemperate personages who really have no right to form such vexatious value judgements and seek to impose them on others. It is nothing short of moral blackmail of a most disarmingly insidious character and the extrication of self from such tangled entreaties leads one to set ones sail almost to the hither shores of creative mendacity.

At Christmas time such complex and abhorrent entrapments loom over the horizon with distressing frequency and urgency. As a confirmed bachelor I am more than contented with my own company, where at least I can be certain of a modicum of decorum and probity. But no, these snooping 'busybodies' feel it incumbent upon themselves to lure me into their ghastly 'sociabilities' without respite or decency. While I fully comprehend how my mere presence would lend some much-needed gravitas and dignity to their proceedings I must of course demur.

"You just cannot be alone at Christmas" they plead. Why ever not? If I wished to follow the swinish herd with their drunken kitsch boorish televisual 'viewing' and over-indulgent frightful lard-ridden foodstuffs then I surely would. (Though I could never, ever, bring myself to don one of those gaudy and horrible paper 'crowns' that seem so essential to such gatherings).

"Think of the children" they cry. Oh but I do. It is my adamant rule to never attempt any conversation with anyone younger than an advanced post-graduate student as it would be simply pointless to try to engage with such juveniles with obviously undeveloped politesse or accomplishment. I recoil with apoplectic horror at the prospect of being entombed with mewling screeching infants whose only discernible skill is to visit the bathroom to defecate with assistance or phonetically mutilate a traditional song whose roots pass their dimmest comprehension. Yet their parents regard such 'abilities' as somehow attractive and engaging and some even go so far as to inflict 'videos' of their brutish progeny performing such monstrosities upon a terrified captive audience. They even seem to view such 'abilities' in their brood as hard evidence of a breakthrough in human evolution to an altogether higher stage. I can think of no greater horror this side of Voltaire.

It has even been tangentially suggested that I hold a soiree of my own, keeping an iron grip upon the list of those invited under a set of stringent criteria of my own personal devising. But the risk of intrusive 'gate-crashers' is simply too great; I cannot bear the thought of them belching and expelling other noxious gases in my own dear home and leaving smeared fingerprints hither and yon, even upon my crystal goblettes. I would simply have to move, there really is no alternative, and the very thought is too stressful to bear.

Since Bangkok seems to boast no obvious Lutheran church where high ritual mingles with solemn liturgy, I shall perforce be spending Christmas alone once more. I will at least be able to dine upon acceptable viands brought in by bespoke 5 star hotels, listen to a decent Sibelius or even a Mahler should the whim strike me, and peruse the current crop of learned journals at my leisure. I can at least be certain that the napkins are crisply ironed and the silver service adequately polished to a lustre not dissimilar to the celebrated vembrace of Menelaus. I will need to check the sherry bottle to establish if it requires replenishment or even replacement after last years festivities but this is not a pressing matter. There is time aplenty to finesse the critical details as needs arise. And I will do so at my own leisure, under no compulsion from the howling pack of pleading coercers who may then go forth and mix with all and sundry, should that be their wish. But in the immortal lines of Ezra Pound "Leave me out, Buster".

Unread authors: crime or vindication?

Over the weekend (hideous phrase! Over two days one week ends and another begins, what gives termination precedence over commencement?). But already I digress. Over the last two days I have received the usual several 'e-mails' pleading for my assistance in solving seemingly intractable problems in the literary and linguistic fields. Normally I tend to ignore these pathetic petitions as below my station but one notification in particular caught my attention as worthy of some contemplation. I will share it with you now.

It seems that there is an academic going by the dubious name of Joe Moron working at a place called Liverpool John Moores University in England (a jaw cruncher of which I had hitherto been blissfully unaware). He has established a 'charity' entitled the Society of Unread Authors (SUA) with the aim of getting woefully unread personages to start to read those publications that have never been read. He wishes to "support all those writers who are left impoverished and traumatised by failing to acquire a readership." This leaves me intrigued and puzzled in roughly equal measure.

While I have a visceral aversion to 'statistics' with their frightful numerical symmetries, he uses such devices to tell an alarming tale. He claims that 200,000 titles are published annually in the UK (he only seems interested in this one country) and 800 appeared on a single day in October as a prelude to Christmas 'sales', most of which were written by someone called Dan Brown or even the disturbing-sounding Ant and Dec. The sheer weight of this publishing pushes other, allegedly worthy authors aside; it seems that they cannot in any way compete with celebrity-obsessed trivia and glutinous 'pot-boilers'. Thousands upon thousands of books are simply not being read at all.

He posits a dual strategy:

1. Recruit enforcers to coerce people into reading the books they buy and ignore, paying them to do so if necessary;
2. Delay publication of many unsuitable books with key words in their title - he cites Angels, Little Book Of, Loose Women, Jeremy Kyle (whoever that is) etc. This should allow people time to read the books they should be reading but, for whatever reason, are not.

I am perplexed by his passion. I myself am no stranger to being an unread author. Indeed I am proud to note that there are few with the stamina or intellect to plough through the dense prolixity of the muscular prose in my published work, not to mention my customarily opaque yet compendious footnoted asides. I am satisfied that my oeuvre is read in the 'right circles', by eminent people with the wit and perspicacity to learn from my cogent analysis. So why should it matter that all these thousands of books be read, even by people completely inadequate to the task?

He feels that this will "enrich our cultural life". I am by no means so sure. Imagine if we unleashed all 'sorts' of menial personages and paid them to read. Who then would empty our garbage, serve our meals or repair our machines? I shudder in trepidation.

We also need to address the question of why these books deserve to be read. I vividly recall the gruesome experience of being trapped in an elevator with a brutish economist who mercilessly harangued me on something he termed 'supply and demand'. Now, using this frightfully simplistic taxonomy, can we not go so far as to suggest that there are simply too many books for people to read? Indeed, there may not actually be that many personages capable of reading them, unless they contain gaudy pictures or came accompanied with coloring sets. If we are producing hundreds of thousands of books a minute when there are so few learned persons actually fitted to read them, then disaster looms.

No, it is better to simply stand back and let the market do its work. We cannot compel or bribe unsuitable persons to read when they are better suited to more menial operations. Likewise, any 'commercially minded' publisher will surely balk at churning out millions of texts when he discovers to his chagrin that nobody is actually buying them. Government intervention, forcing all 'types' of people to read to set targets and quotas, simply will not work and should be resisted on principle. It is but a short step to a bureaucratic strangulation of freedoms and the Ministry of Compulsory Lexicography. Is it not better that uneducated persons are reading trash than nothing at all? So, let them do as they will, even reading this so-called Ant and his doubtlessly worthy colleague Dec. Things will out in the end.