Books is bunkum

I AM duty bound to report that some of the great classics of literature are nothing of the sort. Utter piffle most of them. Great Expectations? None at all as it turns out. Anna Karenina? No naughty bits, just interminable longueurs. I could go on – just don’t get me started on Ibsen. These are not my opinions but are based on impeccable research and academic rigour by two noted writers and scholars, Ford Madox Ford and Michael Caine.

In Woody Allen’s film Hannah And Her Sisters, Caine, the husband, tells a woman that she reminds him of a love poem on page 112 of a book of poetry by EE cummings. This established the literary principle that if that page is interesting, transcendent or whatever, then the beginning and end must be startlingly brilliant, because everyone knows that authors and editors put the most attention into these bits.

It spawned a French literary award, the Prix de la Page 112, which was created in 2012. Last year’s was awarded to French writer Jacques Jouet who wrote a book of poetry while riding on the Paris Metro, which is a lot more interesting than the poems. Or the Stagecoach Number 4 from Ayr.

Madox Ford, in a different page take, wrote: “Open the book at page 99 and read and the quality of the whole book will be revealed.”

So it is from these instructions that I turned to Anna Karenina, first to page 99 which opens with a paper knife scraping on a window and ends with “she rose, threw off her wrap and took off the cape of her coat”. That’s as steamy as it gets. Then on page 112 “the coffee boiled over and splashed everybody”. That’s as exciting as it gets.

Dickens is no better. On page 99 of his opus,the high point is Mr Wopsle and “a snarling passage from Richard the Third”. And on 112, Pip wanders about a “garden full of old hats and boots”. No savage beasts in the undergrowth, unfortunately.

As for the idolised Madox Ford, he should have followed his own advice. Page 99 of Parade’s End’s highpoint is the Rev Horsley and the writer Mrs Wannop – not swallowing tea and scones, tearing each other’s clothes off, and making frenzied love on the chaise longue – but both being “interested in their plates”. If there was sexual innuendo here it bypassed me.

How the Dickens did he and Ford even get published? If the publishers’ readers had turned to these crucial pages their manuscripts would have gone straight into the slush piles.

The late Elmore Leonard, who knew a thing or two about filling the middle, often with corpses, was spot on when he advised writers to “leave out the part readers want to skip”.

It’s an ill wind

Are we over-reacting to this coronavirus thing? Football in Italy played behind closed doors, rugby cancelled, people locked up on a cruise ship so they can spread it to each other, widespread travel restrictions, compulsive hand-washing, face masks sold out, Channel 4’s Jon Snow, and hundreds of others self-isolating with only round-the-clock TV, constant attention and batches of baked beans and pemmican to keep them alive. Crivvens.

This scare certainly feeds the media, although in kinder times the silly season used to be in the summer when the splash was about frying eggs on baking pavements. In a few years, with this global warming, we’ll be doing that in December.

I’m not undermining the potential seriousness but surely there needs to be a sense of perspective? At the time of writing just 16 in the UK have been diagnosed, none has died and nine have already been discharged. The worldwide death rate seems to be low, around 2%, which is obviously too many.

But consider that in December last year eight people in England died in one week of flu and hundreds more were admitted to hospital. There were over 600 deaths here from flu last year and, in chilling contrast, in 2008 there were over 13,000 in the UK. In the US in 2018, there were 45 million cases, 810,000 people had to be hospitalised, and 61,000 people died from the flu. The World Health Organisation estimates that up to 500,000 people die from influenza each year.

We already have a pandemic, it just isn’t as sexy.

Viral greetings

It has no doubt troubled you, in this age of the coronavirus, about the proper etiquette in greeting someone. You clearly can’t take the risk of shaking hands, rubbing noses or face masks, and certainly not kissing on the cheek. So what to do? A nod? A Japanese-style bow? Applaud, with newly-washed hands, like the Chinese? I think sticking out your tongue, as the Tibetans do, might send the wrong signal.

You might put your palms together and bow, as in India, or put your right hand over your heart (or perhaps your wallet if it is a stranger), common in the Middle East. I like the Maasai way of jumping on the spot, but it’s bad for the knee joints.

Better to self-isolate from etiquette. It’s worked for me for years.

Border madness

It’s not just a sense of perspective that’s needed by US broadcaster CNN but geography. After the German health minister warned that his country was facing a coronavirus epidemic, CNN reported that “Germany is not considering closing the country’s borders with Italy due to the coronavirus outbreak”. It would take a miracle, or an invasion, to do so, because Germany, as anyone who has cast even a brief glance at the globe will know, does not have a border with Italy.

Seize the disease

Did the US author Dean Koontz actually predict the coronavirus 40 years ago in his apocalypse novel The Eyes Of Darkness. No, it’s just a fortuitous marketing opportunity. In the book, the deadly virus – named Wuhan-400 – was man-ade in the Chinese city with 100% fatalities, unlike the present-day one. And in the original edition, published while the Cold War was still a reality, the virus was called Gorki-400, after the the Russian city. When relations thawed China became the new enemy and the virus was renamed in subsequent editions.

Steel-y indifference

I had a passing acquaintance with David Steel, Lord Steel of Aikwood as he became, a few years ago. It was around the time he was failing to do anything about the paedophile Cyril Smith. Steel was Liberal leader, later prominent in the LibDems, the present leadership of which appears to think that not just putting up with, but successfully championing a child abuser for a knighthood, as Steel did, is excusable. After being initially suspended from the party, Steel was ushered back in last year with the declaration that he had “ultimately nothing to answer”.

From Steel there has been not the whiff of an apology to Smith’s victims, or over his failure to report the beast to the authorities. Indeed, he’s cast himself as the victim. He’s said he will retire from the Lords shortly. Not that he will give up his title. If there is any justice and even partial recompense to the victims it would be in him being stripped of it.