NOVEL GAZING
Lucy Kellaway is not convinced of
the virtues of middle-class England's new favourite night out
TONIGHT, somewhere near you, they will be doing it: eight or ten consenting adults, crowded around a kitchen table, going at it hammer and tongs. The chances are they will be in earnest debate over Disgrace, last year's Booker prize- winner. Someone will be arguing that it was a grim, prophetic warning of the impending disintegration of South Africa. Someone else will be complaining that he didn't like the book at all: he couldn't empathise with any of the characters. Some Sauvignon blanc will be drunk, Ket- tle crisps eaten and, after a couple of hours, everyone will go home feeling well satisfied — another book under the belt.
Before they go, they will have jotted down in their notebooks, Filofaxes and Palm Pilots the name of the book they are going to talk about next time. Captain Corelli's Mandolin would be the perfect choice, only they've done that already. Birthday Letters? Done that too. American fiction? As I Lay Dying, Humboldt's Gift, American Pastoral? Or a return to the clas- sics? To the Lighthouse, What Maisie Knew, North and South? Or, if all else fails, there is always Proust.
The book club is becoming educated, middle-class England's favourite night out, more so than the cinema, more than the theatre or opera or restaurants. To my mind the book club is the most fun a girl can have,' Kimberly Fortier, publisher of The Spectator, recently wrote in the Times. 'To get to the book club we have turned down a hefty roster of social and family events: a reception at Downing Street, a book launch, the in-laws' golden wedding anniversary.' She is not alone in her enthu- siasm. People en masse are arranging babysitters for the pleasure of visiting the houses of those who are not necessarily friends to listen to their views on a book that they would not themselves have cho- sen to read.
Ten years ago these clubs were largely a women's thing. Mothers with young chil- dren would escape their brain-dead exis- tence for an evening, when they could play out their former lives as educated people in an unthreatening environment. But now everybody is doing it. For every sex, age, special-interest and socio-economic group there is a book club. There are book clubs for oldies; book clubs for middle-aged men with a particular interest in biographies of historical figures; book clubs for New Labour groupies; book clubs for smug married couples; book clubs for Oxbridge- educated media people; book clubs for minor celebrities; book clubs for pushy career women; and, above all, book clubs for networkers, who will accost you in the office, at a party or by the school gates and say, 'I didn't know you knew so and so! They're in my book club.' Just in case there is anyone left who has neither been invited to join a book club nor has the organisational talent to start their own, there are scores of book clubs on the Internet to choose from. Or, as a last resort, there is James Naughtie's Bookclub on Radio Four.
The only people who are not enthusias- tic members of book clubs seem to be the under-thirties. Presumably, their idea of an evening's entertainment consists of some- thing more obviously entertaining. For them, the memory of doing English A-lev- els is fresh enough for the prospect of enforced discussion of a set book to hold no charms whatsoever. For the over-thir- ties, the popularity of this form of compul- sory self-improvement is a puzzle.
There are three very good reasons why book clubs should be less popular now than before. For a start, we are too busy. Our lives are already jammed full of dates and obligations. Willingly to add to these seems folly. Second, there is so much else that we can pleasurably do with our small slice of free time. Never have there been more options and never have we had more money to indulge in whichever of them we 'I can't find a Barclays Bank to boycott.' like. Third, there is a glut of freely avail- able advice on which books to read and what to think of them. Every newspaper and magazine is crammed with book reviews. Radio and television are full of this sort of thing too, the advantage being that if you don't like the views of the per- son you are reading or listening to, you simply stop, turn them off.
Yet each of these reasons, turned on its head, may be why these clubs are thriving. Take the question of time: it is because we are so busy that reading has been squeezed out. No one wants to admit to being a for- mer reader and the only way of ensuring that reading gets done at all is to put it in the diary. Institutionalised as an exclusive social event, reading is cool again. It is also because of, rather than despite, the rival attractions that book clubs are so popular. Everyone can afford restaurants and opera. No one is impressed if you say you went to the River Cafe last night, but if you say you had a fascinating discussion about Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita at your book club, and then drop some of the names in your group, that really sets you apart from the crowd. Or it used to, before the crowd started doing the same thing. There is nostalgia at work too: the more pervasive technology becomes, and the more people feel tied to a life of wicked consumption, the more they long for an evening by the fireside reading a book, and possibly talking about it. There is some- thing wistfully Victorian about the idea, and a book club is the closest they are able to get to it.
A third reason for the book-club craze is that it takes away choice. The more books that are published and reviewed, the more difficult it is to decide which ones to read. The beauty of the book club is that some- one else mostly decides for you. Instead of passively flipping through book reviews, book-club members get the chance to become book reviewers themselves: every man his own Tom Paulin/Mark Lawson, every woman her own Germaine Greer/Allison Pearson. And this is where the fun starts. For one night a month, you can be reborn as a Booker judge. The downside is that you will have to listen to others pretending to be Booker judges too. In every group, there will always be a domi- nant one, a couple of bores, a few emoters and a driven, competitive one who has to win. All must be tolerated month in, month out. If the composition of the group were perfect, with a small handful (say six at most) of funny, clever people, then maybe a book club really would be the most fun a girl — or boy — could have. But, even then, I suspect I'd have more fun still with the same funny, clever people discussing whatever we liked in a restaurant. And afterwards, I could go home to bed and enjoy the solitary pleasure of a book.
Lucy Kellaway is a columnist of the Finan- cial Times.
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