Ten Years in the Tub (8 page)

     
  
Bush at War
—Bob Woodward (unfinished)

     
  
Unnamed Literary Novel (abandoned)

     
  
Unnamed Work of Nonfiction (abandoned)

     
  
No Name
—Wilkie Collins (unfinished)

LITERARY CDS BOUGHT AND LISTENED TO
:

     
  
The Spoken Word—Poets

     
  
The Spoken Word—Writers

U
nfinished, abandoned, abandoned, unfinished. Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. In the first of these columns, I voiced the suspicion that my then-current reading jag was unsustainable: I was worried, I seem to
recall, about the end of the summer, and the forthcoming football season, and it's true that both of these factors have had an adverse effect on book consumption. (Words added to ongoing novel since autumnal return to work: not many, but more than the month before. Football matches watched in the last month: seven whole ones, four of them live in the stadium, and bits and pieces of probably half a dozen others.) Of the two books I started and finished this month, one I read in a day, mostly on a plane, during a day trip to Amsterdam. And it was a book about football.

It is not only sport and work that have slowed me up, however; I would have to say that the ethos of this magazine has inhibited me a little too. As you are probably aware by now, the
Believer
has taken the honorable and commendable view that, if it is attacks on contemporary writers and writing you wish to read, then you can choose from an endless range of magazines and newspapers elsewhere—just about all of them, in fact—and that therefore the
Believer
will contain only acid-free literary criticism.

This position is, however, likely to cause difficulties if your brief is simply to write honestly about the books you have been reading: boredom and, very occasionally, despair is part of the reading life, after all. Last month, mindful of the
Believer
's raison d'être, I expressed mild disappointment with a couple of the books I had read. I don't remember the exact words; but I said something to the effect that, if I were physically compelled to express a view as to whether the Disappointing Novel was better or worse than
Crime and Punishment
, then I would keep my opinion to myself, no matter how excruciating the pain, such was my respect for the editorial credo. If, however, the torturers threatened my children, then I would—with the utmost reluctance—voice a very slight preference for
Crime and Punishment
.