Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

Shakespeare Wrote for Money is the last (sniff) collection of Nick Hornby’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns for The Believer. It goes from August 2006 to September 2008, but unfortunately he takes a six month vacation somewhere in the middle, and the book ends up being much shorter than I was hoping for.

It’s still great, though, and I mean great. I think this is probably my favourite of his essay collections. Let me begin with the usual reasons why: Nick Hornby’s wonderful sarcasm, his sense of humour, his intelligence and insight, his unpretentiousness. They’re all back, better than ever.

I think that back when I posted about The Complete Polysyllabic Spree I said that his reading philosophy is pretty much the same as mine, and that remains true. Which actually makes it harder to write about this book, because I’m tempted to just post 40 passages with a few comments like “Yes!”, “Exactly!”, “Go Nick!” or “Bwahahaha” scattered here and there. Take this, for example:

“What we need”, one of those scary critics who writes for the serious magazines said recently, “is more straight talk about bad books.” Well, of course we do. It’s hard to think of anything we need more, in fact. Because then, surely, people would stop reading bad books, and writers would stop writing them, and the only books that anyone read or wrote would be the ones that the scary critics in the serious magazines liked, and the world would be a happier place, unless you happen to enjoy reading the books that the scary critics don’t like—in which case the world would be an unhappier place for you. Tough.

I love him. And let me just clarify that I don’t mean that we shouldn’t talk about books we don’t like (and despite The Believer’s official policy, I doubt he does either). We should, and we should explain why we don’t like them and invite others to agree or disagree and keep the conversation going. What bothers me is the authoritative attitude behind “straight talk”, an attitude that leaves no room for diversity or discussion. It’s the conviction that these Serious Magazines’ definition of Bad Books (basically, anything not “literary” enough) is the final one.

One of the reasons why I enjoyed this book even more than the previous ones was the fact that he reads and discusses lots of books I love. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao! Fun Home! The Accidental! American Born Chinese! The Road! I loved reading what he had to say about them.

If you think this sounds good, well, it’s about to get better. Because about two thirds of the way into the book, Nick Hornby discovers YA. And so in the next few columns he writes about authors like Sherman Alexie, Francesca Lia Block, David Almond, Phillipa Pearce or M.T. Anderson. The only reason why this didn’t prove disastrous for my wishlist is the fact that most of the books he mentions are already there. The best part, though, was seeing him say wonderful things such as:

These young-adult novels I have been Hoovering up are not light in the sense that they are disposable or unmemorable. On the contrary, they have all, without exception, been smart, complicated, deeply felt, deeply meant. They are light, however, in the sense that they are not built to resist your interest in them: they want to be read quickly and effortlessly.

Or:

They’ve been very disorienting, these last few weeks. I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of, the YA equivalents of The Maltese Falcon or Strangers on a Train. Weirdly, then, reading YA stuff now is a little like being a young adult back then: is this Vonnegut guy any good? What about Albert Camus? Anyone ever heard of him? The world suddenly seems a larger place.

However, I have to say that he disappointed me a tiny little bit by saying that even though he read and loved numbers two and three of the list of best Carnegie Medal winners (Tom’s Midnight Garden and Skelling), he’s not ready for number one yet because he can’t imagine enjoying books with hobbits and sprites. Number one, by the way, is the entirely hobbitless and spriteless first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

The way he says it is so free of arrogance and so unpretentious that my disappointment didn’t last long. But I did entertain the notion of locking him in a basement somewhere with a copy of the trilogy and only letting him out when he was done reading it. Also, I wonder if this hobbitphobia is what’s keeping him from Terry Pratchett. Maybe I should also leave a copy of Nation in the aforementioned basement and only let him out when he’s done with that too. Because considering the other books he likes, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t enjoy those.

Another thing: in The Polysyllabic Spree he complained about how nobody has any scruples about spoiling the plots of classic, and I mentally clapped along. Well, Nick Hornby, I have not yet read Jude the Obscure. And no, I’m not sure if I will, but that’s not the point. But I forgive him, because I know that, unlike some, he didn’t do it because he believes that anyone who hasn’t read a classic yet deserves to have it spoiled for them or any such other ludicrous notion.

I’m going to miss his columns so much. But in the last one he does say it’s over “at least for a while”. So who knows! Maybe there’s hope.

Books added to my wishlist:

Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty by Tim Sandlin
1559: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro
Skelling by David Almond
Clay by David Almond
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (was on my mental list already)
Holes by Louis Sachar (same)
Ironweed by William Kennedy
The World Made Straight by Ron Rash
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer

A few more notable passages:

The French book about reading that’s been getting a lot of attention recently is Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, which should surely be retitled You Need Some New Friends, Because the Ones you’ve Got Are Jerks: literary editors seem to think it’s zeitgeisty, but out in the world grown-ups no longer feel the need to bullshit about literature, thank god.

…but reading begets reading—that’s sort of the point of it, surely?—and anybody who never deviates from a set list of books is intellectually dead anyway. Look at the trouble Orwell’s essays got me into. First of all there’s his long and interesting consideration of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a novel that I must confess I had written off as dated smut; George has persuaded me otherwise, so I bought it.

Yes, it’s the job of artists to force us to stare at the horror until we’re on the verge of passing out. But it’s also the job of artists to offer warmth and hope and maybe even an escape from lives that can occasionally seem unendurable drab. I wouldn’t want to pick one job over the other—they both seem pretty important to me. And it’s quite legitimate, I think, not to want to read The Road. There are some images now embedded in my memory that I don’t especially want there. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have a duty to read it.

Just recently, I read an interview with a contemporary literary novelist who worried that books by other writers who use pop-culture references in their fiction would not be read in twenty-five year’s time. And, yes, there’s the possibility that in a quarter of a century, The Abstinence Teacher will mystify people who come across it: it’s about America now, this minute, and it’s chock-full of band names and movies and TV programs. (…) Yet some fiction at least should deal with the state of the here and now, no matter the cost to the work’s durability, no? (…) My advice to you: don’t read writers with an eye on posterity. They are deeply serious people, and by picking up their books now, you are trivializing them. Plus, they’re not interested in the money. They’re above all that.

Other Opinions:
An Adventure in Reading
where troubles melt like lemon drops
Stainless Steel Droppings
Biblio Addict
In Spring it is the Dawn

(Let me know if I missed yours.)