It must be six months now since my first post on The Dabbler. Since then I have posted quite regularly and have enjoy participating in the wise, lively and good-natured banter that is daily Dabber life.
So I like to think I am part of The Dabbler community; that I am among friends. Right so far? I really hope so. Anyway, what do friends do? Well, they tell you their secrets. So, my Dabbler friends I am going to tell you one. It’s something that has been eating away inside me for some time and, until now, I have never found it appropriate to share it with anyone else.
Well, I’m not going to beat around the bush about it. I’m going to come straight out and say it. So here goes… I SECRETLY HEART AUTHORS. That’s it, I’ve said it now.
God I’m not feeling as relieved as I’d hoped. In fact, I have started to hyper ventilate. Anyway, no going back now. Let me explain.
There are writers out there who strike a special chord with me. They can be of either sex, but they write in a way – can be fiction or non-fiction – that just makes my heart melt a little. I don’t know what they look like or anything substantive about them, I only know that their writing talks to me in such a way that makes me love them a little. We’re not talking bibliographic porn here, more deep Byronic Platonic affection.
I got to thinking about this after I had an almost violent reaction to someone’s stinging, ill-thought out criticism of the author Tim Parks. Why should I care what they thought of him? Why did I leap to his defence with such vigour and passion? Why oh why did I take it all so personally? And then it dawned on me. I harboured deep – and until that moment unacknowledged – feelings towards this author. I was smitten with his written.
So what links all my booky nookie? Well, I‘ve been thinking about this. Let’s take Mr Parks. Well, it’s not his fiction. Sorry Tim, I know you’ve been shortlisted for the Booker but they are way too dark for me. Nope it’s his non-fiction and in particular the three charming books he wrote chronicling his life in Italy – Italian Neighbours, An Italian Education and A Season with Verona. The first two are about him setting up home in Italy with his wife and family. The last is about the season he spent going to every home and away fixture following his beloved football team Verona.
He brings a wonderful insight into Italy and its people. He’s inquisitive, clever, funny and his descriptions of seemingly mundane everyday things paint a compelling picture of his adopted country and its people. He is kind and generous about the people he meets, and although he exposes the darker side to Italian life, there is a real affection there. He doesn’t resort to cynicism or ridicule. He is interested in his surroundings and he has a zest for life.
That’s it isn’t it. It’s all about character. I have never understood the attraction of horribleness. The way you see the world and your generosity of spirit – these are what matter in a person. They are, of course, only part of a life-commitment package; looks, good hygiene and genital arrangement being pretty core too.
The more I think about this author love thing, the more questions it raises. Do authors get stalked by people driven crazy with desire after reading one of their books? I have little personal experience to bring to bear to this question. The worthy chapter of a book I once wrote (translated into Dutch) on the Palestinian economy had is plaudits, but there was no underwear in my post. Also, I wonder if authors actually consciously set out to get their readers to fall in love with them.
Anyway, I feel so much better now. I’m an out and proud author lover. Are you?
Neil Munro does that to me, warm glow, contented, tail wagging. This through his Para Handy novels.
Is it also the setting Toby, there is something about the land south and east of Pisa airport that enchants the cockles, pointy trees, hot Tuscan sun, noisy locals and manic bus drivers. Started at the Malty’s with Mortimer’s Summer’s Lease and currently resides with the Michele Giuttari stuff via Preston’s Monster of Florence, all mixed with generous helpings of Hibberts excellent guides.
Various flavours added of course by da Mosto, Dame Maggie and Monty Don with further background material by GiottoDanteBoccaccio.
Jilly Cooper anyone?
I’ve got a thing for big hairy dead canadian Robertson Davies
Ah, necrophilia worm, must be somewhere on the to do list, after rose pruning and fixing Jilly’s gap.
Barbara Pym – an excellent woman. More crumpet, vicar?
Horribleness is certainly a wildly over-rated attribute, in literary folk as well as others.
For a Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney seems like a hugely likeable guy: by all accounts I’ve read, he manages to be affable, convivial, and pleasantly uxorious while keeping up a hard-tempered steely shrewdness. Apparently, some of his friends have a betting game in which they egg him on to make unkind remarks about third parties: hardly anybody has been known to collect.
Agree about Robertson Davies, although there’s a touch of the whiskery bore about him sometimes. B. Pym leaves me pretty cold.
“A touch of the whiskery bore”
should be the title of an obscure victorian smut pamphlet
Yes, A Touch of the Whiskery Bore: or Fixing Jill’s Gapdoes sound like something published by the ‘Cosmopolitan Bibliophile Society’ or some similarly named imprint …
I tend to project beauty & charm onto authors of any books I enjoy. This happens with seductive voices on the radio too – it’s all very unreliable.
Despite being a shameless philanderer, I somewhat fell for Duff Cooper
We should, when around authors and within the bounds of reason keep our powder dry, the least best of them can but bore and ultimately we don’t have to put hand in pocket.
We should save the cordite for more worthwhile targets, the media operatives amongst whose ranks lurk the most loathsome and offensive creatures and whose remuneration we, the mugs, directly and indirectly supply.
In theory we collectively are their gaffers so lets sack the twerps. Make a list, it will be long, then go on the offensive.
Lets begin with the shit faces shit face, Dimbleby. Yes, lets get him, out with him, no golden handshake, into the dumpster of history with him.
How about Marr.
No undergarments in the post (yet) Toby, but I was informed recently by Ed. that I had a fan club, with perhaps two female members, and that on one of the Sundays that I had not posted for Lazy Sunday, questions had been asked. This, naturally enough, sent my fevered imagination into overdrive, not with tableaux of Platonic love, free of physical desire: no, I was thinking more Priapus, with half-crazed middle-aged women turning up on the front step, to be met by the Medusa gaze of my child bride, who would usher them into my study with ‘ it’s for you, Mahlerboy ‘
I’ve got the hots for Beryl Bainbridge at the mo…
Speaking of radio, Natasha Mitchell of ABC Radio National does that to me. She’s the wonderful host of a fantastic radio series called All in the Mind! Coming back to books, I felt that way when I read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi..its..um..er..a graphic novel! I have a thing for them. They can be brilliant and are hard to get right, since they blend two different mediums. Anyway for those who have never touched one, you must give them a chance!
P.S I do read books that don’t have pictures in them!
Alasdair Gray and Michael Moorcock. James Joyce and I have had a thing for years.
Every night I go to bed with Alain de Botton.
Wow. I imagine that he must read Proust aloud to you as you fall asleep…
Thanks all for sharing! I’m glad I’m not alone.
Mahlerman – Perhaps you should do a Barry White tribute one Lazy Sunday to send your female admirers into a frenzy.