Something To Remind You: Books

It was St. George's Day on Saturday. Sant Jordi's day. It was also the day of the book and of the curious ritual of exchanging a rose for a book. What happens nowadays? Do Interflora and Amazon both deliver?

The personal may be being taken out of many aspects of life, the Kindle and the iPad may be assuming greater significance, but the book itself endures. Rather like vinyl, the book is more substantial, more tangible than a disc or the physically non-existent, the download. It is more personal.

In Palma, they celebrated book day. Politicians took the opportunity to celebrate some time as last men and women standing. Before they succumb to their probable fate in May, the regional president and the mayor of Palma were among the visitors. Antich was talking a good book, or was he a talking book? The next legislature will introduce initiatives to develop reading, so he said. The education minister was on hand to echo this and to insist that it was necessary to give strength to plans for reading development. What have they been doing for the past four years?

Reading, sales of books, financial assistance for parental purchase of books; these all crop up among the statistics that are regularly trotted out in the press. More than literature, Mallorca has been creating a generation that can read figures rather than prose. The attention that is paid to reading does, though, emphasise the role of the book in local society.

But this same society has been bemoaning standards. Last September, at the literary gathering in Formentor of book publishers, concern was expressed at the fact that children no longer had the "experience of the book". Public education is sub-standard enough for it to have been admitted that, while children read, if not as much as they might, they don't understand. Levels of comprehension in Mallorca and the Balearics, along with other core benchmarks in education, are below those of the Spanish average and well below those of Europe as a whole.

Despite a tradition of the book and literature, Mallorca has produced little by way of great works. Not on an international scale, at any rate. Yet, the island can lay claim to being the birthplace of the European novel. Ramon Llull's "Blanquerna", written in the thirteenth century, is often held up as the first of its kind. It was written in Catalan, emphasising the importance of the language in civilising mediaeval European society, something that is conveniently overlooked by many.

There was a mere gap of some 700 years before something approximating to a great work about Mallorca came along, Llorenç Villalonga's "Bearn" about the fall of the Mallorcan nobility. But for most people outside Mallorca, both it and Llull's work are obscure and generally ignored. A more recent Mallorcan literary tradition hasn't been one at all, but a foreign invasion of Peter Mayle-apeing pap.

For the visitor, Mallorca and books mean not the unknowns such as Villalonga, but what gets thrown into the suitcase. Holidays are reading time; for many, the only time they read a book. New technologies may spawn greater interest in reading, but the Kindle is still subject to the same drawbacks as the book on holiday: Ambre Solaire thumbmarks and grains of sand working themselves into the crevices.

The book on holiday can take on greater significance than merely a means of whiling away some hours on a beach or by the poolside. It is a remembrance, something to remind you. I know exactly where I was when I read William Trevor's gut-wrenchingly sad "The Story of Lucy Gault" or when I laughed hysterically at the insanely irreverent "Henry Root Letters".

Both are somewhere, among all the other books, the old copies of "Wisden", the Ian McEwan first editions, the translation of the bible for the Inquisition, the "Malleus Maleficarum". These are my own descendants of what I grew up among - Hemingway, Dickens and the less cerebral Mickey Spillane and Harold Robbins.

The day of the book is a fine idea. There should be more of them. If only as a reminder of the greater aesthetic of the book. It can be read, but it can also be seen as a single object and even smelt. The new technologies don't offer the same pleasure and appeal to the senses.

In years to come, will the day of the book become the day of the electronic book? Stalls of handheld devices? Will the exchange of gifts mean a rose for a Kindle? I very much doubt it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

I Read The News Today

What do you read on holiday? Do you read on holiday? The answer is you probably do. Holidays are the defenders of the written word. Remove holidays and books would forever remain unread. But I ask again - what do you read on holiday and perhaps also where do you read? Newspapers on the beach. A total no-no. Too much wind. Turn the sheets and off they fly, joining the lilo bouncing towards France. For me the newspaper was always the treat for après-beach, a cold drink or several on the terrace and the satisfaction of poring over the cricket scorecards. Magazines? Less cumbersome but still prone to flapping around. But which mag? There was an airplane buzzing along the coast line here a couple of days ago, a plastic sheet of advertising trailing behind in the style that used to introduce "World of Sport (with Dickie Davies)". "Bunte - heute neu" (new today). It did the trick in that I went and had a look at what the fuss was. Michael Ballack and some romantic photo ops. I didn't get further than the cover. What is the carbon footprint for flying a plane past Alcúdia and Muro's German sunbathers in promoting a German footballer?

In these days of low tourist spend, newspapers still seem to sell, even at inflated overseas prices. Don't let it be said that people in all-inclusives don't spend money. I was at the all-inclusive flavour of the month, the Continental Park, not so long ago, and a gentleman of bellydom came to reception to purchase a copy of "The Sun" and "The Star". The all-inclusive is the repository of the highbrow. But a brace of red tops will set you back less than one broadsheet that is no longer a broadsheet. "The Times" is a cool 4.25 on a Saturday, the still broad "The Sunday Times" is a whole of your five European euros, and for the Spanish version you only get a decent-sized wood rather than the entire rain forest of the UK edition.

The cheap, local alternative is to cough up a euro for "The Bulletin", but it lacks the sports pages and the gossip of, say, "The Mail" or the red tops. You could go totally cheap and spend nothing, courtesy of freebies. But don't expect them to detain you for longer than a minute. A compromise, at 50 centimos, between the free and "The Bulletin" is the peculiar "Island Buzz" with its absence of buzz.

But newspapers can only eat up so much time by the poolside. The book, or a number of them, is one of the first items on the packing list along with the shorts and mosquito repellent. I have read some of my favourite books ever on holiday - William Trevor's "The Story of Lucy Gault", Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love", Jonathan Meades' "Filthy English", Christopher Priest's "The Glamour", Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor" and Annie Proulx's "Postcards". It's a diverse collection of the gut-wrenchingly sad (Trevor, Meades and Proulx), the master of tension (McEwan), the partly Elizabethan English of Ackroyd and the downright weird (Priest). I am unsure why I am attracted to sadness as a staple for holiday reading, though there have been periods of comedy reading - the Tom Sharpes and the priceless Henry Root letters. I once holidayed with someone who tackled Salman Rushdie. "Midnight's Children" may be revered in some circles, but Rushdie appeared to be more a penance than a holiday, though not as harsh as attempting Joyce or Dostoevsky from the comfort of a sun-lounger. I should know; I've tried them and consigned them to the fall-asleep-in-the-sun file in very quick order.

Whatever or wherever one reads, there is one major issue - not the what or the where, but the how. How does one read? A chair makes the problem easily surmountable, but the towel, the towel on the beach is a serious obstacle. Lying on your back shielding your eyes from the sun - impossible. Lying on your side and that pain in the neck gets ever more painful or the crooked arm supporting the head and neck goes to sleep. Lying on your front and the sweat drips from your forehead on to the page or the sun oil slides into your eyes. Reading on holiday, a good book on holiday is essential, but it ain't easy. Hand me that MP3 player.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ken Dodd; thankfully I can find no youtube. Today's title - oh, come on, this is too easy.

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