Today’s lock down diary. Finding something to read.
Today I discovered the most pointless book in the whole world ever.
I was looking for something to read. Normally this would not present a problem. I’m writing this in an office teeming with books – every inch of shelf space, every spare scrap of the floor, even the edge of my desk is piled, crammed and over-loaded with enough reading material to last through a nuclear winter.
Clancy is convinced I breed the things. I once calculated, quite a while back now (2010 sounds about right) that the amount of money I’ve spent on books during the course of my life would have bought me a house – in fact since then I could probably afford to build an extension, pave the yard and pop a conservatory at the back. If it wasn’t for bibliomania I’d be living in the lap of luxury, or at least Kirkstall.
But nothing on my shelves (or floor, or desk) took my fancy. It was one of those days when you want to read something, but you don’t know what that is, just that you don’t have it.
I subscribe to an online digital library called Scribd – the best £8 a month of anyone’s money – and I can spend many a happy hour or two just flipping through the catalogue, adding more books to my imaginary “to read” pile, never getting round to reading more than a preface or two. One of the best bits of Scribd is the Documents section. Here subscribers to the service upload millions of random pdfs and ebooks. It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of obscure, esoteric, unread material, an absolute delight for someone like me who appreciates the weirder side of world literature.
I sometimes think of the Documents section of Scribd as something akin to the British Library and I’m a modern day Karl Marx, if Karl Marx was researching the utterly pointless, useless, irrelevant aspects of modern society – which, in a sense, he was. I just checked and the complete works of Karl Mark are there, and Ricardo, and Malthus, and dozens of contemporary works about the condition of the working class in nineteenth century England. It’s an education.
I can’t remember what I was searching for – you type an author, title, or theme into the search box, and it returns thousands of results – in fact I think I was simply looking for a novel to send to a friend who had asked if we at Culture Vultures had anything she could review. She normally reviews theatre – theatre is her thing – so her opportunities are a tad limited right now, but she occasionally branches out into book reviews. Had we got anything? She was so bored.
I checked the CV email. Pretty much zero going on there. We chatted a bit about what we were currently reading (I mentioned I was rereading Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel, and she poo pooed the idea… anyone who doesn’t get Archy and Mehitabel can’t be my friend) and she mentioned she was a big fan of Sarah Waters. That may have been the name I typed into the search box?
I suggested I could send her a Barbara Comyns novel, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, a damned good lockdown coronavirus read, very appropriate. I used to have the hardback, and when I checked on Amazon that book was nearly a thousand quid! Go check! Even the paperback was twenty. I happened to have an ebook/pdf (though still wondering which bastard has my hardback copy! That’s a few months rent!) I hope she enjoys.
In fact, if anyone else fancies a read just let me know.
Anyhow, I tapped “Sarah Waters” or “Barbara Comyns” or “Don Marquis” into the Scribd search box, clicked on the Documents section, asked for items 100 pages plus, then scrolled down the choices…
And came up with this beauty.
Dictionary of Non-notable Artists, by Gregor Weichbrodt.
Which is possibly the most worthless, futile, ridiculous book I have ever read. Well, not exactly read, it’s not technically a book you can work through from beginning to end, so perhaps the word is “perused.”
It’s brilliant. I haven’t laughed so much in weeks. It’s wonderfully mean, wicked and derogatory. Everyone mentioned within could only aspire to be an answer in Trivial Pursuits.
I did look up my own name… I’m hoping there’ll be a second edition.
If anyone fancies a copy let me know.
And it gave me an idea for a bit of fun. Give me an author, title, or theme and I’ll see what Scribd documents comes up with. Guaranteed to be a bit odd. And completely pointless. But something you’ll never have read before.
It’ll amuse me, at least.
Unlike the quiz that Clancy is forcing me to join in with this evening. Clancy asked me to mention the quiz. I said I would. Quiz mentioned.