Low life
It's a grind
Jeffrey Bernard
Most people have the idea that reviewing books is either easy or fun — or both — and results in making extra money because of being able to sell the books at half price afterwards. It is in fact a grind, and reading a book you don't want to read or that bores you is particularly hard work.
Even if it's a book you do like and are interested in, it is still hard work; and a biography I have in front of me — of Abra- ham Lincoln — is something of a scholastic challenge since, although I am extremely interested in the American Civil War, I am not sure that I am equipped to write about Lincoln, who was a little more complicated than a good man who stood out in a crowd of politically bewildered Americans who, although bewildered, came down very emphatically on one side or the other after Fort Sumner.
But I also reviewed last week a book that has me politically bewildered or at least not quite certain what to think and that was Bernard Levin's new collection of his columns called I Should Say So. There was a danger at one point of Mr Levin running out of fuel for his column, or so I thought when communism died, but I should have known better. Levin is red-hot on any form of injustice but I wish to God he would get around to it without having to lead up to it with as many as 250-300 words. I suppose I want to know what I'm going to read about without having to dig for an age for a clue. As I said, Alistair Cooke does this with his excellent Letter from America, but listening is a damn sight easier than reading, and in Mr Levin's case the reading can be hard work. I think perhaps it's harder work sim- ply because it isn't actually , meant to amuse, it is meant to make you think.
But, in all fairness to Levin, I once read a column of his some years ago which was so good that I determined — not for long, you may be sorry to hear — never to try to write another column myself ever again. At the time, I was writing a column for the Daily Mirror magazine. That folded and I clutched at another straw. I remember some other good columns at that time and Queen magazine gave space every issue to anyone interesting who was not a profes- sional journalist. Some of the columns were remarkably good, and I remember Fenella Fielding writing about conservation almost before the word was invented. Elizabeth Smart wrote a gardening column after her book column for Queen and what made it unique was the fact that she didn't want to draw the distinction or couldn't draw it between flowers and weeds and she bestowed her love equally on both.
At Mike Molloy's, the editor's, behest I wrote a column that somehow involved me in sport. One day I halved a hole with Dai Rees, never having played golf myself, and on another day he had me in a car with the rally driver of the day who he told to scare the hell out of me by taking me into cor- ners at 100 mph, and on other occasions he had me thrown about by a man called, if I can remember, Starbuck who was the heavyweight judo champion of England which hurt a lot since I didn't know how to fall. Although Mike Molloy has been very good to me ever since, I think that at that time he may have been trying to give me a message of some sort. He certainly got a pilot of the Rothmans-sponsored aerobatic team to make me vomit after a couple of stunts.
Anyway, of all those columns that I have just read, I doff my cap to Bernard Levin, but my out loud laughter I reserve for Oliv- er Pritchett and Richard Littlejohn. But God help most of us because we certainly need it.
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