Seriously furrowed middle brows
Hugh Massingberd
READING GROUPS by Jenny Hartley
OUP, 15.99, pp. 194, ISBN 0198187785
Afew years ago I inadvertently joined what I suppose could be classified as a 'reading group' — breathlessly billed on the blurb of this paperback survey as 'one of the success stories of the age. Newspapers are writing about them; celebrities are forming them.' (Coo, just fancy.) I had been under the impression that it was merely a dining club but then, suddenly, there developed an alarming round-thetable discussion as to what we had all thought of — yes, you've guessed it — Captain Corelli's Mandolin (which, of course, comfortably tops this survey's hit parade). Needless to say, I had not read it. Now, I learn women have been admitted to the gathering, which is hardly surprising as the survey shows that all-female groups account for 69 per cent of reading groups and only 4 per cent are all-male. I have not been back since.
I wish I could say that Jenny Hartley's chatty, copiously researched and instructive study has persuaded me to change my mind, but she does not allay my abiding worry that I might find myself in 'a group therapy situation', being gratuitously insulted by comparative strangers. (Hugh, I sense some repressed hostility there. Can I share with you the probability that you're a deeply insecure paranoid fantasist?') Indeed one American therapist told the survey that she was recently called in to counsel three groups 'in crisis' and spent 'hours and hours' on 'group therapy'. I rest my case.
By way of a defence mechanism, no doubt, I am tempted to echo Sir John Betjeman's disappointment that a chapter entitled 'The Pleasures of Reading' turns out not to be a celebration of the architectural joys of Berkshire's county town. (Betj, though, would surely have approved of the Lavery picture on the cover, 'Girl in a Red Dress Reading by a Swimming Pool'.) But perish the thought that I might be categorised by Jenny Hartley (`Principal Lecturer. University of Surrey, Roehampton') among the 'metropolitan journalists' who 'may sneer at "the virtues of middle-class England's favourite night out" '. A footnote reveals that this particular 'sneer' appeared in The Spectator last year. You begin to understand where Ms Hartley is, as they Say, 'coming from' when a few pages later she refers to James Naughtie as 'the genial Scottish host of Radio 4 Bookclub'. Hoots, mon.
Yet, setting aside such page-turners as 'Book groups are also big in New Zealand' and the all too predictable lists of what Anthony Powell memorably dismissed as 'pretentious middlebrow verbiage of the worst kind', Reading Groups is chock-full of (sometimes unintentionally) funny oneliners culled from the survey's questionnaires, some of which might even have graced Powell's own recently published A Writer's Notebook. 'Up till one in the morning with the Book of Job,' commented one working mother. 'No stopping us now.' The representative of another group noted, 'We have two male members: this stops us making too many sweeping generalisations about men.' (Quite so.) And I particularly liked such vignettes as 'One member will not read beyond the first swear-word or bonking session'; 'Four of the five men wear hearing aids that whistle when they get excited'; and 'one woman sleeps most of the way through'.
The literary judgments quoted often have a refreshing directness. 'Denis Healey's The Time of My Life — very tedious reading."Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire — nobody liked it.' Fever Pitch — what a moaner, oh for heaven's sake grow up, we all said.' Jeanette Winterson's Boating for Beginners — nothing in it, couldn't make any sense of it, author obnoxious.' In such remarks as 'We have learnt to steer clear of magic realism' one recognises the authentic voice of that forgotten species, the Common Reader. This survey tends to confirm my fear that proper novels are simply not being recommended. By way of supplementary background research, I asked one of my wife's friends what she is encouraged to read by her green-belt group. The answer was the usual pseudointellectual piffle. Sowing the seeds of subversion, I suggested that she proposed the new novels by Ferdinand Mount and D.J.Taylor. Perhaps a blow for the counter-revolution could be struck by a Spectator Reading Group?
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