Let’s start by not explaining that title just yet, which will at least give you some incentive to read on until we do.

As I write these words, it is 12 noon on Sunday. It should be 10 o’clock in the morning, but it’s taken me much longer than usual to get myself going on this week’s post. Indeed, I think I am only here in front of the laptop today because a few people were kind enough to tell Bernice and myself that they particularly enjoyed last week’s offering, and because a friend whom I regard as a serious writer (as opposed to a dispenser of half-a-yard of assorted ramblings like myself) mentioned this week that my unfailing ability to deliver the goods week in, week out, inspires her to take up her own pen. This is an awesome responsibility, for which, at this moment, I don’t think I thank her. Still, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

This whole getting myself motivated thing is not helped by the reading matter currently on my bedside table. This is because, as luck would have it, none of the books I am reading is of the: ‘Good grief! Even I could do better than that!’ variety. Each one of them is the work of an author exhibiting complete mastery of his art or craft, and therefore, paradoxically, the worst thing to read if you are trying to write while being plagued by impostor syndrome in the first place. (For anyone unfamiliar with the phrase, impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which one doubts one’s accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. For some of us, it’s not so much a syndrome as a way of life.)

Anyway, let me share my current reading matter with you: all highly recommended (provided, of course, that you, yourself, are not at the moment trying, and failing, to write).

The first author, and perhaps the most daunting for me, is Bill Bryson, whose The Body – A Guide for Occupants I am thoroughly enjoying. I must apologise for coming so late to what is such a well-publicised book, but I don’t generally stay on top of the literary news; it was my clever daughter who read up about this attempt ‘to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us’, and, thinking, quite rightly, that it had my name written all over it, Esther and Maayan bought it for me for my birthday. It is endlessly fascinating, with an average of three or four scarcely credible facts on every page, and it is written with the easy charm, sense of wonder and delightful humour that characterise all of Bryson’s work. Why is it for me the most daunting read? Because, if I ever think that I might possibly be a writer when I grow up, then this is the kind of writer I might least unrealistically kid myself I could aspire to being, and reading the genuine article can lead to despair.

My only other criticism of it is that it places me, at least twice a day, on the horns of a dilemma: I can’t wait for Bernice to read it after me, and I really don’t want to spoil it for her, but at the same time so much of it is so astonishing or hilarious – or sometimes both simultaneously – that I want to read great chunks of it to her, even though I know I am in danger of spoiling her enjoyment of it when she does read it herself.

Next is James Joyce’s Ulysses, reading which was one of the items on my Retirement To Do list. I started off tackling this task with full seriousness, reading Homer’s Odyssey for necessary context, studying Jeri Johnson’s 50-page introduction to the 1922 text edition of Ulysses, and buying Harry Blamires’ The New Bloomsday Book as a guide to supplement the 250 pages of notes at the back of the Oxford edition. I am enjoying the read; indeed, I think I am enjoying it more as I gradually ease myself free of the perceived need to research every note, and just surrender myself to the sound of the text itself, and let it wash over me. By this means, I am starting to feel that, by the time I get to the end, I will begin to appreciate why so many regard it as such a great novel. I have also discovered that I enjoy it more if I read it aloud, very fast, in an appalling Dublin accent, although, of course, I can only do that when Bernice isn’t around, and, if I ever ride the buses again, I’ll have to refrain from declaiming there as well.

Which brings me to a practice Bernice and I have recently revived: one that we indulged in a lot in the early years of our marriage, usually lying in bed. I am referring, as you have probably guessed, to reading fiction aloud. I read Bernice the entire Jane Austen canon way back in the day; I firmly believe that reading aloud sets a measured pace that allows you to fully savour Austen’s sense of irony. Dickens, of course, begs to be performed as well – he set the unattainable standard for that himself, in his hugely popular reading tours. Ideally, Dickens demands a week’s pause between chapters. That is how many of his original ‘readership’ experienced each of his books: serialised, with one member of the family reading aloud to the household that week’s instalment from a literary magazine.

We revived this fine practice with Bernice’s surprise birthday present to me this year: Clive James’ epic poem Rivers In the Sky. I am sitting here wondering which is the more daunting task: describing this poem to someone who hasn’t read it, or describing Clive James to someone who does not know of him. Let’s start with the man. Over a period of 80 years, from the late 1780s, England sent her convicts to Australia. Then, in the 1960s, Australia sent England a string of larger-than-life characters, such as Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Clive James. This has to be one of the better deals England has ever made. If you need reminding who the first two are, or just want to bathe in nostalgia, you will find Humphries in the persona of Dame Edna here, and Greer in the persona of Germaine Greer here. (Be warned: the Greer documentary is X-rated.)

As for Clive James, he first rose to fame as the man whose weekly newspaper column of TV criticism was read by everyone, not only for its intelligent analysis, but also (and, to be honest, principally) for its often blistering humour. He once described the young body-builder Arnold Schwarzenegger as looking “like a brown condom full of walnuts”. After 10 years at the top of his game as a TV critic, during which James also published several collections of more serious literary criticism, he then, for some of us inexplicably, created and hosted a programme that celebrated the lunacy of the Japanese TV genre of human endurance reality shows, where contestants underwent such challenges as having their torsos smeared with fish food, before being lowered into a river stocked with hungry catfish. James presented this programme with a rather uniform mocking bemusement, and I never understood why he devoted so much of his time to (wasted so much of his time on?) something so insignificant. The answer, I now think, was that he found television, all television, fascinating, because he saw it as an honest reflection of life. He once wrote: “Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.”

Those of us who were upset that James was wasting his time and talents on this trivia need not have worried. At the same time as researching and presenting this series, and later a very successful series of travel programs, focussing on a different major world city each week, he was also teaching himself Russian, because he “could no longer bear not to know something about how Pushkin sounded”. He spoke several other languages, and published an English translation of Dante’s Inferno. He could talk intelligently for hours, and apparently frequently did, about his various passions, which included both Formula One motor racing and the tango. TV chat show host, presenter of documentaries, publisher of five volumes of memoirs and several novels, poet and songwriter, he was told, 11 years ago, to expect that he would die very shortly of leukaemia, and was then given ten more years through a miracle drug, ten years in which he produced a number of fine books, and many of his finest poems.

River in the Sky is an epic poem, mostly written in free verse, with some blank and some rhymed sections, In it, James, contemplating his imminent death, looks back to key events, people and places in his life, while also examining a range of cultural references broad and deep enough to make even James Joyce look only half-educated. It is 120 pages of the most dazzling, moving, witty, searingly honest brilliance, less a river than a rollercoaster.

It’s now 6 o’clock on Monday evening, and time to explain the title of this week’s post. Last week, I had little idea what to write about, so I tidied up some loose ends, fed off my readership, and called the resulting pot pourri Sundries. This week, I had even less idea what to write about: the problem continues, so we now have Mondries. I’m just praying this dire situation doesn’t continue for more than seven weeks.

Which reminds me of a piece of verse from the Look pages of The Sunday Times (dedicated readers will know that that is the London-based newspaper of that name). This piece lodged itself between the teeth of my mind in the 1970s, and no amount of probing with tongue and toothpicks has succeeded in budging it since then.

Three Times a Week
Monday:
Choosy
Wendy.
Thursday:
Heidi.
Saturday:
Cindy

And penultimately, some audience participation. I have three other books to tell you about. Shall I do that next week, or are you all booked out? Please let me know – below or by email.

And finally, here’s another reader in the making: over 8 months ago.