Ten Years in the Tub. Nick Hornby

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СКАЧАТЬ the central couple, go to stay in their holiday home. Sophie opens the door to the house, and is immediately reminded of a friend, an artist who used to visit them there; she thinks about him for a page or so. The reason she’s thinking about him is that she’s staring at something he loved, a vinegar bottle shaped like a bunch of grapes. The reason she’s staring at the bottle is because it’s in pieces. And the reason it’s in pieces is because someone has broken in and trashed the place, a fact we only discover when Sophie has snapped out of her reverie. At this point, I realized with some regret that not only could I never write a literary novel, but I couldn’t even be a character in a literary novel. I can only imagine myself, or any character I created, saying, “Shit! Some bastard has trashed the house!” No rumination about artist friends—just a lot of cursing, and maybe some empty threats of violence.

      Zoë Heller’s Notes from a Scandal, about a fortysomething pottery teacher who has an affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil, was moving along nicely until a character starts talking about football. He tells a teaching colleague that he’s been to see Arsenal, and that “Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0.” Readers of this column will have realized by now that I know almost nothing about anything, but if I were forced to declare one area of expertise, it would be what people say to each other after football matches. It’s not much, I know, but it’s mine. And I am positive that no one has ever said “Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0” in the entire history of either Arsenal Football Club or the English language. “Beat,” “thrashed,” “did” or “done,” “trounced,” “thumped,” “shat all over,” “walloped,” etc., yes; “won,” emphatically, no. And I think that my dismay and disbelief then led me to question other things, and the fabric of the novel started to unravel a little. Can you really find full-time pottery teachers in modern English state schools? Would a contemporary teenager really complain about being treated as “the Kunta Kinte round here” when asked to do some housework? I like Zoë Heller’s writing, and this book has a terrific narrative voice which recalls Alan Bennett’s work; I just wish I wasn’t so picky. This is how picky I am. You know the Arsenal bit? It wasn’t just the unconvincing demotic I objected to; it was the score. Arsenal haven’t beaten Liverpool 3-0 at Highbury since 1991. What chance did the poor woman have?

      I haven’t finished the Richard Yates biography yet. I will, however, say this much: it is 613 pages long. Despite the influence Yates had on a generation of writers, it’s hard enough finding people who’ve read the great Revolutionary Road, let alone people who will want to read about its author’s grandparents. I propose that those intending to write a biography should first go to the National Biography Office to get a permit which tells you the number of pages you get. (There will be no right of appeal.) It’s quite a simple calculation. Nobody wants to read a book longer than—what?—nine hundred pages? OK, a thousand, maybe. And you can’t really get the job done in less than 250. So you’re given maximum length if you’re doing Dickens, say—someone who lived to a ripe old age, wrote enormous books, and had a life outside them. And everyone else is calculated using Dickens as a yardstick. By this reckoning, Yates is a three-hundred-page man—maybe 315 tops. I’m on page 194 as we speak, and I’m going to stick with it—the book is compelling and warm and gossipy. But on page 48, I found myself reading a paragraph about the choice of gents’ outfitters facing the pupils at Yates’s school; I felt, personally speaking, that it could have gone.

      I reread two other books this month: How to Stop Smoking and Stay Stopped for Good, and Quitting Smoking—The Lazy Person’s Guide! I reread them for obvious reasons; I’ll be rereading them again, too. They’re good books, I think, sensible and helpful. But they’re clearly not perfect. If I do stop smoking, it may be because I don’t want to read Gillian Riley anymore.

       November 2003

      BOOKS BOUGHT:

       Bush at War—Bob Woodward

       Six Days of War—Michael B. Oren

       Genome—Matt Ridley

       Isaac Newton—James Gleick

       God’s Pocket—Pete Dexter

       The Poet and the Murderer—Simon Worrall

       Sputnik Sweetheart—Haruki Murakami

       Lie Down in Darkness—William Styron

       Leadville—Edward Platt

       Master Georgie—Beryl Bainbridge

       How to Breathe Underwater—Julie Orringer (two copies)

      BOOKS READ:

       A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates—Blake Bailey (completed)

       Wenger: The Making of a Legend—Jasper Rees

       How to Breathe Underwater—Julie Orringer

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