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Yes, I've read Bore & Peace
THE thing is I don't need to lie, because I actually have read War and Peace.
Are you impressed?
Apparently you probably are. A survey discovered so.
It discovered nearly two-thirds of people lie about the books they read to come across more engaged. They give it the big 1984 when, in fact, the nearest they've got to George Orwell is voting for Ulrika on Celebrity Big Brother. They should be ashamed of themselves. Mini Me blatantly deserved to win.
And it seems people knock up these make- belief bookshelves – Tolstoy instead of Tolkein, James Joyce instead of John Grisham, him what wrote The Bible instead of her what wrote Harry Potter – in the hope it makes them seem more intelligent, more literary, more cultured.
Which is strange.
Because all I ever assumed reading War and Peace said about me was that I had too much time and not enough imagination.
Still, surveys don't lie (except, of course, when they do, which is actually most of the time, but, for the sake of argument, let's pretend they don't). And so if ploughing through Tolstoy impressed people, then perhaps I ought to start dropping it into a few more conversations.
"Can I buy you a drink? A vodka? Just like Pierre Bezukhov, eh? Yeah, he's from War and Peace. Great book. Just reading it at the moment. It's got 1,300 pages, you know,"
Frankly, I'm not sure how well that would go down. But then I'm not really sure why anyone would want to lie anyway.
Stands to reason, surely, if you like boy wizards battling the forces of darkness then you'd have a far more rewarding conversation with someone who also likes boy wizards battling the forces of darkness.
They're easy enough to spot, after all. They're the one's talking – vaguely – about 1984.
But, no, according to anthropologists and literary experts who analysed the results of the World Book Day survey, it's actually in our instincts to lie.
It's a good thing no less, they reckon.
It shows a desire to be culturally aware, an acceptance there are books we should read – even if, strictly speaking, we can't be bothered because there's a re-run of Celebrity Love Island on ITV3.
The lie shows we have expectations of ourselves, ambitions to be educated and enlightened, even while being entertained.
It shows we want to be more.
But I'm not so sure.
Those who lie about Tolstoy should, instead, read another Russian, Dostoyevsky. Notes From The Underground is only 91 pages and could probably be half completed in a typical ITV ad break.
It is only fools, Dostoyevsky says within, who become something they are not.
So too, it is only fools who, in the hope of impressing, claim to have read books they have not.
Especially War and Peace. It's utter garbage.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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