Heavy Reading

Heavy. That is an adjective I have heard many a time to refer to a book. We are not talking weight - but often it is also a factor. Who wants to lug around a book that weighs the same as a bag of potatoes? That kind of heaviness has prevented me from borrowing books. The prospect of carrying a particularly heavy book on robotics around nearly stopped me - but fortunately the bus route allowed for a relatively easy transportation. In the future I'd have my robot James carry it for me. It is one argument for electronic books. Just one. I prefer however the tactile quality of touching a book, the aroma of musty and new books alike - probably not good for you at all. The heaviness I am talking about here is the other type. Literary heaviness. The mind gob-stoppers like the modernists Proust, Musil, Nabokov, Joyce and their spawn. There was an exhibition in the Freud museum in Vienna where they had books that people were given but couldn't finish - many were from the modernist canon. You can't read these books and watch television - nor for that matter can you listen to Alexander Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor and watch Paris Hilton and Friends. I tried and failed. It is either Paris or Alexander. Try the following. Reading Aidan Higgins' Balcony of Europe and listening to music. You can't do it. But you could read a John Grisham novel and stand one leg, watch a rare recording of Maria Callas and still know who did it. I found Higgins' novel, the first part to be very Iroishy and delightful in a Flann O'Brien way. The bulk however is rich. Every page is encyclopaedic in reference - we learn a lot from how a hedgehog makes love, to the slang of someone from x place. It is very rich. You must pace yourself like a box of expensive and filling chocolates. It has the catholicity of the Baron Corvo and the absurdity of Sam Beckett. If it were a dog it would piss on your trouser leg and then adopt the pose of a martyr. There is sex and booze there too. John Calder tells us in his autobiography that Aidan was a boozer. Maybe you need a drink to relax you while you are on board the Higgens' book.