It’s been one of those days when you feel that the world has a personal vendetta against you. I was getting no-where fast today so decided to hide myself away in the bath for a long soak. I think best in the bath, have in fact plotted most of my books surrounded by soapy bubbles but today I wanted to lose myself in my current reading matter. I have just finished a Tess Gerritsen, her books grip me from start to finish and I devour them but the book I currently have on the go couldn’t be more far removed than the sort Tess writes as it’s Peter Kay’s autobiography which I am finding bellyaching funny. I don’t usually read autobiographies as I never believe thay are the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but only what the person wishes you to know about them (fiction in most cases in fact) but I wanted to read Peter Kay’s as it has received such rave reviews and he seems the sort of man to me to tell it like it was, warts and all and half way through the book I have no reason to think otherwise. I’ve only read one other autobiography before which was Adam Faith’s and believe it was an honest account of his life and thougherly enjoyed it. I had the good fortune to interview him once for cable television and found him such a nice bloke, no airs and graces and I fancied him something rotten and not that he would have looked at me twice but a relationship with him was doomed before it started as I am five foot eight and a half, him five foot two or three and odd couple springs to mind…
Anyway, I was in the bath reading about Peter Kay during his youth. Well something he wrote which had nothing whatsoever to do with what it reminded me of but nevertheless it resurrected a memory for me. At the time I was temping as a secretary for a head doctor at the Towers mental hospital and there was a senior manager there that thought he was far above conversing with us clerical minions and until this incident I don’t think he actually said more than two words to me but somehow he must have found out I’d had several books published and therefore worthy of his attention. ‘I hear you’re a published author,’ he addressed me as we were passing each other in a corridor, his tone of voice leaving me in no doubt that what he had heard couldn’t possibly be true as I obviously wasn’t from a silver spooned family or had a private education. When I told him I was, five books at the time to be precise, he was stunned into silence for a moment before he said. ‘Well you’re in very good company, my dear. As an author you’ve got to be well read, well I am too, very well read in fact. There isn’t a literary classic I haven’t read at least twice. Who’s your favourite author?’
Well I might not have a private education but I’m certainly not thick and knew he was expecting me to say Tolstoy, Virginia Woolfe, (I once attempted to read Orlando and couldn’t get passed page 4) or their likes and us have an in depth discussion on what in our opinions these literary giants where setting out to achieve through their works. I wish I could have captured the look on his face and posted it for all to see on this site, when I truthfully responded. ‘Agatha Christie. I’ve read all her books at least a dozen times.’ The great woman was then and still is my favourite author. The snobby manager gave me a look of utter contempt and sneered, ‘You’re no more a published author than I am as if that’s the kind of books you read then you couldn’t possible possess the brains or the mentality to write anything worthy of reading..’ He then stormed off, me never to breath the same air as him again during the rest of my time working at the mental institution. But his rude behaviour towards me made me wonder just what is perceived as literature?
To my mind why is it that a work of fiction is not seen as literature unless it is difficult to work out just what the story is actually all about and written in such a way you wonder if the writer studied the same form of English at school as you.
To me all written works are literature whether they be classic tales by Austin, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde or mass market modern day gripping page turners by the likes of Martina Cole, Tess Gerritsen, Harlon Coben, Lesley Pearse or even myself. We shouldn’t be judged, like that snobby manager did me, by what we read. Surely the whole point of delving into the pages of a book is for the reader to be transported into a world they’d never experience in real life had the writer not opened their eyes to it but most importantly, whoever that particular book had been written by, whatever tone it took, at the end of the book the reader enjoyed their journey through it and gained something from it.
After that snobby managers treatment of me, I never again judged a person by the title of the book I saw them reading or…. the book itself purely by it’s cover!!!
Best regards
Lynda x
