Collage: Industrial Action / New Year Reading Resolution / Monsieur, or The Prince of Darkness (1974) by Lawrence Durrell

RTomens, 2024

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   'Happy New Year.'

   'Yes, Happy New Year.'

   He doesn't need to ask what I want. 

  I sit outside the cafe thinking about New Year's resolutions, one being to wait until I've finished reading a novel before I buy a new one - hah! Yes, that old collector's challenge, the one many a book addict has attempted but, I'll wager, rarely achieved. Working against the idea for me, as a charity shop-only buyer, is the fact that a desirable book available so cheaply is irresistible. If you bought a book brand new without having read what you were reading you'd be nuts, wouldn't you?

   So I sit in the Zone of Temptation that is Kentish Town High Street, where six charity shops are my hunting ground. Six! And the good thing for me is that a lot of quality books turn up around here. They're a 'literary' bunch in this area and don't mind giving what they've finished with to charity shops. We often venture out of town and of course visit any charity shops we find but after years of having done so it's clear that people out of town aren't as 'cultured'. Is that predictable? Does no-one out of town read good books? They must do, surely. Yet you try finding one in the charity shops of, say, Welwyn Garden City! Now I know 'good' is subjective, yes, but come on...rows of Romance novels and Thrillers - huh!

   My first hunt of 2024 can be conducted with a clear conscience because, yes, I actually finished a book this morning. Having read Monsieur, or The Prince of Darkness by Lawrence Durrell, I feel like I need a reward. Is it that bad? No, it's very good, really interesting, you might say. Well, I don't persevere with novels that aren't any good. Life's too short (and rapidly getting shorter) to close the back cover and say 'That was all right.' I may even go through the whole quintet, of which Monsieur is the first. A new New Year's resolution?  Durrell isn't easy going. He makes no concession to the reader, writing, it seems, purely to please himself. To put it negatively, he's self-indulgent, but who made the rule that says that's not allowed? Teachers at Creative Writing classes no doubt enforce it strictly, but then their job is to foster future Successful Authors, not wayward, experimental literary artists.

   Monsieur is a 'mystery' novel and a 'romantic' one, neither in the common senses of those words. You may even call it 'metatextual'. One thing's for sure, despite experimenting with the form, Durrell remains unfashionable in the sense that another famous radical, Thomas Pynchon, is 'cool' for the 'hip' crowd. Durrell was too interested in affairs of the heart and the nature of life, perhaps, to tempt those who want big ideas wrapped in riddles and sounding like the incoherent verbal outpourings of an LSD victim - take that, Pynchon! That said, Durrell was quite capable of being baffling, for me anyway. The last quarter of Monsieur left my mind a useless mush in his narrative blender as I read but could not register what the hell was going on. Despite that, I wouldn't want to have missed either the ritual in the desert or the trip down the Nile.

   Denial isn't a river in Egypt, so I can deny that the chances of me keeping to my resolution are slim, but there's more chance of succeeding than if I were to buy a gym membership, that's for sure!