Sir Walter Scott, by John Buchan
First edition, Cassell and Company Ltd, March 1932.
I’ve just finished reading this wonderful book, so beautifully written, but I’m not about to write a crit. Rather I am using the Buchan as an example of the sort of book I have on my shelves. Buchan wrote it in 1931, the centenary of Scott’s death, and now, nearly 100 years later, I have read it. Indeed, nobody else had read it through, because I had to cut the pages, which hadn’t seen the light of day throughout that time, as I went. I’m not sure if there’s any point in putting a book on your shelf, unread, for a century.
I don’t know whether it’s due to an intimation of mortality, but I’m decluttering. A friend of mine has told me that what I am doing is called “Swedish death cleaning”. The last time I did something like this was in 2015, when I got rid of all my diaries. I’d kept a diary off and on since my final year at school, at first intermittently, and then more regularly, almost to the extent of having a daily entry, between 1986 and 2015. That’s nearly three decades. It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare. “Nothing much happened today.” I’m not quite sure what function it served, other than to provide a practice space for somebody interested in writing, much as a musician might practise scales and arpeggios. It was probably neurotic. Nobody else read it. I might have been writing to an imaginary penfriend.
Then one day I woke up and asked myself, why am I lugging around fifty bulky volumes of illegible scribblings every time I relocate? So I destroyed them all, without a qualm. Well, sentimentally, I held on to the first one, the one I kept while at school. Other than that, it took me a week to shred the whole lot. I never regretted it. That happened just after I had started writing this weekly blog, nearly twelve years ago, and it may be that the blog replaced the diary and was a marked improvement upon it, because it was a shared thing.
Now I find myself looking at my books, and contemplating a similar clear-out. The fact is, I live in a library; there isn’t much room for anything else. It’s ridiculous. I really need to move them on. Somebody might get the benefit of them. They are mostly good stuff. Some are in pristine condition. One or two may even be quite valuable. My local Oxfam shop is pretty good at accepting half a dozen volumes, but a thousand? I thought of contacting the Andrew Carnegie Library in Dunfermline and seeing if they’d like to have them. I read English Lang and Lit at Glasgow, and then Medicine at Edinburgh, and Mr Carnegie kindly paid me through medical school, with a trust grant. So I owe him. But would he thank me? What other outlet could I try? I’ve heard it said that our prisons are keen to inculcate the book habit among the inmates. The late Jeffrey Archer’s prison diary trilogy Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven might strike a chord, but the Scott Moncrieff translation, in three volumes, of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu? I keep an open mind.
So I left the books on the shelves for a while and, proceeding with the declutter, concentrated on cassettes, and vinyl. The collection goes back to the 1960s. I loaded them all into the car and took them along to a second hand shop in Stirling, who were pleased to receive them, especially as I wasn’t looking for any recompense, although I don’t think they thought they had much retail value. Apart from the Beatles LPs. They liked them. Stravinsky’s Les Noces they were less sure about. I held a few back, again for sentimental reasons – Beyond the Fringe, Britten’s War Requiem, and something I suspect to be of some value, the Beatles Double White Album. I told the shop I didn’t want any cash, that they were doing me a favour. They kindly said they would make a donation to the charity of my choice. I opted for UNICEF.
Then as a temporising measure I hired a cell in a storage place in Stirling, one metre cubed, and began to empty the shelves in my living room. I loaded up the car with books, drove to the storeroom, and I started to fill the cubicle. I made two journeys.
Then the CDs. I’m not sure what to do about them, so I shifted them out of the living room and, as we say in Scotland, ben the hoose. Now that the living room is three-quarters empty, my plan is to replace the carpet, and the furniture.
I find the whole thing very liberating and ask myself, why didn’t I do this before? If I find an outlet, I might give all the books away, save Roget’s Thesaurus (school prize) and my first edition Ian Fleming books. I won’t be completely cavalier about it because there might be something on the shelves, some slim volume, that is of some profound personal significance to me, like Charles Foster Kane’s boyhood sledge, Rosebud, consigned to the furnace.
I remember when I was about 11 years old hearing the story in the New Testament about the man, a rich man, who goes to Jesus and asks him what he needs to do in order to lead a good life. Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give the money to the poor. But the man goes away, exceeding sorrowful, because he loves his possessions too much. I have a notion that if I had been standing beside that man, I might have said to Jesus, “Me too. I’m up for that!” It sounded carefree and anarchic. But Jesus would have seen right through me, and said, “No, not you. That paper run you do in Glasgow’s West End. How much is Mr Winning paying you?”
“A pound a week.”
“Open an account with the British Linen Bank and lodge a pound a week, and an extra pound on the day of my birthday, for the next year. Once you have accrued £53, plus interest, come back and see me and I’ll tell you what to do.”
But I would have gone away, exceeding sorrowful, because the task was just too dreary and disciplined for my taste. I just couldn’t be bothered.
