june 16th extract- charlie parker

Charlie Parker-The Bird Gets The Worm

Today, 16^th June is Bloomsday. This year Radio 4 have been running dramatisations of the novel all throughout the day and broadcast live from Dublin. This has prompted me to dig out from the back of the bookcase the copy of Ulysses that I bought a long time ago. Looking in the front cover, I’ve written the date-July 1991. And I’ve still never read it. I think that I once read the very studious introduction and about half of the first page of the novel and gave up. I really must give it a proper go. As it’s about half way through the year I should make this a sort of resolution-to read Ulysses before the end of 2012. It would be good if I could say that Ulysses is the only book that I’ve bought but never got through. (Considering I’ve read some shit novels over the years and generally try to plough through to the end of any book, just in case it turns out to get better, the number of books I’ve given up on is small but potentially significant.) Glancing at the bookcase I can see two others, quite easily, that are sort of glaring at me. Like Ulysses, I bought them a long time ago and did start them before throwing in the towel. One of them-Remembrance of Things Past, a hefty tome, I even took on holiday with me. It was carted on a coach trip to Italy in 1988-the only book that was given the honour. I got about 30 pages into it before deciding that life was just too short. I did bring it back with me though. It has since sat on the bookshelf and moved between houses a number of times, unread and was joined at around the same time with War and Peace which suffered a similar fate. Although Tolstoy never managed to join me on holiday I have picked it up on a number of occasions, put it in the car when embarking on a long journey with the full intention of actually giving it a proper go. I’ve driven back with it unread and it joined Proust and Joyce on the bookshelf. The graveyard of unread classics.  And for twenty years or so they’ve sat there gathering dust. The significant thing is that I’ve known they’ve been there all this time and they’re sitting there, challenging me, daring me even, to make a start. It has become a battle of wills in a literary sense. I can’t bring myself to throw them out-I’d never do that with a book anyway- and every time I read something “easier”, say Nick Hornby, I have a feeling that even if I’ve really enjoyed it, then I have taken the easy, lazy option. Then I feel a bit guilty but instead of caving in, even if I read something more complex than Hornby say, DeLillo, then I still can’t win because I feel that Joyce, Proust and Tolstoy (doesn’t that sound like an especially erudite firm of accountants or solicitors-Joyce, Proust & Tolstoy?) are sitting up there, whispering that I’ve still bottled it. Even after all this time and the hundreds of books I’ve read in the intervening years I’m still not up to reading them. It’s the fear of the first page I suppose. Not writers block but readers block.