Robert McCrum 

The library of one’s past

Robert McCrum: It's remarkable what gets stored along with the books on your shelves
  
  

Books
Looking back ... books turned in on a shelf. Photograph: Martin Godwin Photograph: Martin Godwin

I had to move some books at the weekend, and one box of first editions, a kind of snaphot of recent English literary life, gave me pause.

First, there was a slightly scuffed edition of The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis, with my student signature, and the date, June 1973, on the flyleaf. This novel, with its garish 70s cover, is simply bursting with ambition and energy, from the nod to Dickens and Pickwick in the title, to the fizzing first line ("My name is Charles Highway, though you wouldn't think it to look at me."), to the Jaggerish author photograph.

Next to it was a copy of William Boyd's entertaining first novel, A Good Man In Africa. Like Amis, but much more privately, Boyd has pursued a successful literary career as a novelist and screenwriter, but has almost completely turned away from the light comedy of his debut. His last two books, Restless and Ordinary Thunderstorms, indeed, are really thrillers, of a rather elevated kind. But both writers are still in business, and both command respect and admiration from their readers.

The third title in this assorted box, Ratking (1988) by Michael Dibdin, opens a window on a different perspective. Dibdin, an exceptional crime writer, died prematurely in 2007, and his backlist is now being mined for television. Rufus Sewell, playing the Italian detective Aurelio Zen, recently starred in a BBC series, Zen. Dibdin is now in the interesting condition of all writers whose published work is complete, and in the hands of posterity. My hope and guess is that aficionados of crime will treasure his work for years to come.

Lantern Lecture, published in 1981, and signed by the author, Adam Mars-Jones is a hardback at the startling price of £6.95 net (a reminder that it appeared in the days of the long-lost Net Book Agreement aka retail price maintenance). A dazzling debut, evoking comparisons with the best, Mars-Jones (who has written literary criticism for the Observer for the past 10 years) is still in his prime as a writer, though he has been slow to publish. His last novel Cedilla, following the acclaimed, but difficult, Pilcrow, suggests a writer reaching a new kind of maturity. Again, like Boyd and Amis, Mars-Jones has turned away from the youthful comedy of his debut, and is now exploring darker themes.

Finally, two paperbacks, one a proof (Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All) by Allan Gurganus was a succes d'estime in its day (1989), but so far as I know, Gurganus who seemed extravagantly gifted, has written very little of consequence since.

And finally, a very battered paperback of a shameless autobiography, Thanks for Coming! by cultural entrepreneur Jim Haynes, who is back in the news in Scotland. The Bishop of Edinburgh has suggested erecting a statue to the American expat Haynes in recognition of his contribution to Scots culture through Edinburgh's Paperback Bookshop and the Traverse Theatre.

It all seems (and is) a long time ago. The books in our private libraries are tiny splinters of autobiography (mixing memory and regret). Of course, open them up again, and all the old pleasures come back.

 

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