Under the Influence

After another fruitless search for an old favourite, it occurred to me that we’ve been fooled for years by biographers, reporting on the “influences” that shaped their subjects.

When my biographer(s) get to work, they will undoubtedly visit my bookshelves to learn about me and will come away convinced that I’m the product of the rubbish to be found there. In reality, I’ve realised that none of the books I loved inhabit my shelves any more.  I suppose that’s true of most of us.  The books we loved were passed on to friends while the ones that left us indifferent were stored to gather dust.

My most recent searches have failed to recover Buzzati‘s The Tartar Steppe, Calvino‘s If on a Winter Night a Traveller …, and Böll‘s Group Portrait With Lady.  The list goes on …

It’s inevitable. I was only looking for them to lend them on anyhow!

Cultural Differences

Reading Le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy. The eponymous character is in Saigon tracking down his prey. In a seedy bookshop the latter is known to visit he checks out the expatriate offerings:

For the English, pornography printed in Brussels. For the French, row after row of tattered classics: Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hugo.

I laughed out loud. Typical Le Carré, but so accurate too. On my last visit to Brittany the newsagents were crammed with biographies of famous mathematicians.