17 June 2022
I could be lying. This might not be a post on tsundoku1. It might be more a meditation on the community of selves. Or happiness. We’ll see.
If I were being honest, then owning up to it being about guilty pleasures would, perhaps, be prudent. Something of a misnomer, a guilty pleasure. We haven’t felt guilt about pleasuring ourselves since the seventeenth century. Ah, I might have to rephrase that. The pursuit of pleasure (in general, not to oneself) has lost all connotations of sin and guilt.2
A guilty pleasure is less ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’, and more ‘what would my friends think?’. Actually, on reflection, it does sound a lot like being caught self-pleasuring.
Really it should be labelled an embarrassing pleasure, given it’s about admittance to enjoying things our peers may consider lowbrow or trite.
I finally read some Epicurus, and while not party central he did concede that pleasure should not be guilty.
I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclination as you will, provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbours, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions. That you be not checked by one or more of these provisos is impossible; for a man never gets any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not receive harm. 3
I take this to mean if you are desperately horny all the time, then by all means go at it like crazy, and fuck like a bunny as much as you need. However, don’t complain to our man Epicurus if nothing much gets achieved in life. Lentils uncooked. Garden unpruned (for those of you with a lascivious mind this is not a euphemism).
Tsundoku is a delightful Japanese word for a pile of unread books. With eight books setting you back a ton, leaving them magnificently adorning the bedside table could indeed constitute a guilty pleasure, but I’d like to venture a new concept, one I’ll term an ‘earnest obligation’.
My friend from back in the day, Ollie, came to stay with me last week. This may explain a lighter than usual edition this weekend. Given his delight in speeding along mountain roads it's something of a miracle there’s even a post at all. I’m digressing, much like the car tyres bordering a hairpin-bend thousand foot sheer drop into an awaiting chasm. “What should I bring?” He asked. “Swimming trunks and a book” I replied.
“Great! I’ll bring Jane Eyre. I started it six months ago”.
“Hhhmmm” I ventured, “surely there’s not a lot left to read for a week long stay?”.
“Not at all, I’m only on page 36”.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“I’m not enjoying it at all”.
I have known Ollie since we were teens. Rest assured he is a man who takes his pleasure very seriously indeed. Legendary levels. Grand Master shit. He’s also adept at staring into space admiring the view, or at raked pebbles. A Sifu of pebble staring. And highly intelligent. So why is a sybarite putting himself through the purgatory of reading a book he’s not enjoying. On holiday to boot.
This my friends, is not a guilty pleasure, this is an earnest obligation at play. I’m also very grateful to him, as I had considered the possibility I may just be alone in this. If Anne doesn’t like a book, it is used to clean brushes.
This behaviour can only be a consequence of the community of selves. The one that thinks we should better ourselves. The opposite of the one who enjoys guilty pleasures.
My ‘earnest obligation’ is buying books that I think I should read. Let me state for the jury, not books I buy wanting to be seen reading. I do that too. I’m referring to novels that everyone says are zeitgeist and clever, and what all the smart people is reading like.
I'd like to add two TLA's (three letter acronym) to #bookstagram's vocabulary
DNF Did not finish
TBR To be read
UWB Unknown why bought
PRU Purchased remains unread
I have acquired for instance...
Joan Didion's "Play It as It Lays", as everyone is down with Joan, even my mum. When it arrived I read the first page, and the book and I stayed friends. Anne said "what are you reading that for?", so I passed it across, so she could learn Didion's thoughts on snakes. "What the fuck" I think best relays her response. 4
Renata Adler's "Speedboat" which sounds cool, but mainly because I love the Lloyd Cole song of the same name. 5
Rachael Cusk's "Outline" because I want to be at one with the cerebral, the thought-provoking, the daring. Although I did read David Szalay's "Turbulence" which sounds very "Outline" and I enjoyed that. 6 7
The reality is, I purchase books I know I'm unlikely "to get". I should admit to myselves that my mind doesn't work that way, and instead spend my money on books where we find out who did it at the end.
I mention all this because of authenticity, the community of self, and finding happiness. If you don't know yourself, how can you expect to be happy.
How do we know when we are exercising a lesser community-of-selves self, to better oneself, and when we are pretending to be something we are not?
Here's Hak Baker signing "Venezuela Riddim" as recommended by daughter a few weeks back.
It's a couple of years old. Which is about Consume and Enjoy's zeitgeist level, but as far as I know Hak is still on the quiet. It's fucking great.
Aside from its sheer joy and brilliance, it's interesting in terms of authenticity. If you heard it without watching the video, you might not realise Hak is of Jamaican descent. I spent ten years in the music industry, authenticity is not high on the agenda. Novelty is.
He describes his music as G-Folk, so you'd be fully expecting to hear some Grime style rhymes spat over some Bert Jansch samples 8. That's the sort of recipe record execs would throw money at, with novelty hit written all over it. Instead Hak sings in his Isle of Dogs raised accent, updating the musical genres of London's East End, melting and merging as he says, grime, folk, punk, pub-sing-along, with a touch of less traditional Latin jazz horns.
Authenticity in pop is rare, so let's shout out for Hak Baker. Testament is the text I received from Ollie, sat on the runway, homeward-bound, having endured a week of my DJing in the car. "Send me a link to that East End tune".
Hak Baker - Conundrum
Hak Baker - Thirsty Thursday
Stand Out Stories: In Conversation With Hak Baker
Although it may be authentic to myself, a novel where we find out who-what-done-it doesn't seem to cut the mustard for Hak Baker's tales of the community. Geoff Ryman's "253" does. Originally an internet hyperlinked text back in 1996, then published as a novel. It has a premise a music exec would love, gimmicky as fuck, 253 passengers travelling on a Bakerloo Line London Underground train between Embankment station and Elephant & Castle. Each character described in 253 words.
An Oulipian constraint, although rarely referenced as an Oulipian work. This I pinched from Wikipedia...
Ryman states that the meaning of 253 is dramatically changed when read in digital form as opposed to print form. In reading 253 on the internet the links between passengers create and emphasise existing similarities between the passengers. It becomes a text about how intrinsically similar people are. Whereas, in print form 253 is about how different people are. A lack of links between passengers means that the reader must traverse the story linearly, thereby emphasising the differences between passengers.
I read it as a book, and found it deeply empathic. It can be read online at web.archive.org/web/20120113034518/http://www.ryman-novel.com/
"253" by Geoff Ryman
granta.com/best-book-1998-253/
It can purchased from www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Ryman-Geoff/253---the-print-remix/9780006550785 or AbeBooks, but since that’s Amazon owned, you can get your own link.
Apologies for recommending an out-of-print book, but I felt it authentic to this week’s somewhat vague theme. If we are a community-of-self, we should self-reflect on which of us are authentic. Fitting in with the crowd, or reading Jane Eyre because it is “great literature”, regardless of actually enjoying it, will not allow us to accept ourselves any better.
Likewise, figure of speech aside, seeing a pleasure as guilty, will not bring peace to ourselves. Accept we have differing needs for differing times, which can seem conflicting. Allow for the pleasure that’s correct for the current you.
Reading Jane Eyre repeatedly is also allowed, even with a tub of ice cream mounted in the other hand. What is borderline perhaps, is “laundering it”. A habit my sister had during her heroin days, where a copy would accompany her to the bathroom. Once ensconced in the tub, and hit administered, she would sink blissfully into the hot water, Jane slipping from her hand to receive a good soaking. “Ah, you’ve been laundering your book again” my father would wryly comment.
Happy Father’s Day. In memory of Tony Edward Baker.
Further listening
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions – Speedboat
Bert Jansch – Angie
If G-Folk seems unlikely at first, back in 2011 I saw Bert Jansch and Lethal Bizzle perform on the same stage, albeit not at the same time, guesting with Peter Doherty.
Tito Puente – Oye Como Va
The way one should finish anything, on a high. I ended up playing this twice in a row after Googling it to demonstrate Hak Baker's cheeky traditional East End Latin trumpet.
Illustration by Timothy Hunt
“Éclair” ©2021 Timothy Hunt
A shoutout to Timothy Hunt, my favourite illustrator, who very kindly allowed use of his work to enliven this post. Please do him a solid by following him on Instagram and liking all his posts. Even better would be visiting his shop and purchasing a print, gold star goes to commissioning him to design or illustrate your next project.
www.instagram.com/timothyjphunt
www.timothyjphunt.co.uk/shop
A small ask
I’m currently interviewing a few more authors , who have kindly relented agreed to humour my inquisitiveness. I feel rather sheepish in the number of subscribers, and would love their words and work to reach a wider audience.
If there’s anyone you know who you think would enjoy these posts, please forward this edition on to them, or a different one you think better suited to wooing. Better still, ring them up, harangue, shout, threaten and coerce them into subscribing. Nicely, of course.
References
Stormzy started out as a road rap MC, rapping in a style closer to hip hop than grime. “When I started, everyone was a grime spitter... Everyone was just spitting grime, and then this UK rap scene came about”
https://www.capitalxtra.com/features/facts/stormzy/road-rap-to-grime/
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.
Hi Julian, and thanks for that wonderful recommendation of the 253 book! I'd never heard of it before, but it is truly a magical experience to read it. I'm only at the fifth passenger now because I spent an hour reading all the "important announcements", but until now I'm enjoying it immensely. It's such a wonderfully crazy project! I think I'll write a review of that book too. Thanks again for pointing me to it! I can't wait to see what you'll talk about next week...