Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 17:50:12 -0000 From: John Bailey Subject: Re: [WRITERS] INT: The eMJay award interviews, par four (FORE!) >>> Anyway -- what three books would you choose to spend a year with? So. Here I am, locked up in my cell deep beneath the Halls of the Mountain King, too far away from the endless celebrations to catch the Elvensong, and contemplating the three books I've elected to help me through the next year. I'm assuming that the Bible and Shakespeare have been omitted from the options on hand, which is just as well, since I'd want neither. What do I need, given that my material wants are taken care of? Sunshine, for one thing. Laughter, certainly. Last, but not least, stimulation of the intellectual kind. Sunshine is probably the most difficult. Modern writing doesn't go in for sunshine too much. Perhaps the writers spend too much time peering into computer screens to value it; reading some modern stuff you could be forgiven for thinking they don't even know what it is. So I'll drop back a century or so, and take Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selbourne". Don't try and short-change me on this - I want the full edition, with all the notes and appendixes, not your standard pasteurized penguin version. I'll be checking. White values sunshine much as I do; sunshine in all seasons, of all flavours. Laughter isn't all that easy, either. An obvious choice would be P.G. Wodehouse. You can laugh at his language - its skill, its fitness for purpose - even if not for the hilarity of the doings of the brainless fops populating his pages. I'm tempted, too, to ask for the collected works of Richmal Crompton. There's a lot of laughter in "Just William". Trouble is, I'm not sure either of these would still be funny after a year's close company. So I'll opt for a collected works of Betty MacDonald and if there isn't a collected works you'll jolly well have to produce one specially for me (there should be one, anyway). It'd be a truly dark moment when Ms MacDonald's hilarious journey through life couldn't raise a good laugh. Intellectual stimulation is the one I could most easily get wrong. If you knew my history and predilections, you'd expect me to ask for a collected works of Thoreau. Or Bertrand Russell. Both would be a dreadful mistake, a triumph of snobbery over sensibility. I'd soon be yawning over a steady diet of either of them - they are both best known in snippets, carefully selected for applicability. I'll go for the collected poetry and prose of William Blake. A careful, detailed study of Blake would be a worthwhile occupation. At the very least I'd like to come to a proper understanding of the "Songs of Innocence and of Experience". Now, go away and leave me to enjoy my hermit's retreat. Try to sneak a wire to the Internet in and I'll bite your hand off. Or set a Tyger on you. Cheers, John ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John Bailey. Somerset, England Laughing Leek: