Bookmarks

by J.G. Farrell

Twenty-eight writers discuss their own books and those they have read.

165 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

James Gordon Farrell, known as J.G. Farrell, was a Liverpool-born novelist of Irish descent. Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. The Siege of Krishnapur won the 1973 Booker Prize. On 19 May 2010 it was announced that Troubles had won the Lost Man Booker Prize, which was a prize created to recognize works published in 1970 (a group that had not previously been open for consideration due to a change in the eligibility rules at the time).

Farrell's career was cut short when he was drowned off the coast of Ireland at the age of 44.

Reviews

[Ian Laird]

I remember watching a television adaptation of Frederic Raphael’s The Glittering Prizes starring a youngish Tom Conti, in 1976. It was startlingly contemporary and modern. Well that was long ago and so is this book published in 1975. It is now an interesting cultural artefact collecting as it does (at Raphael’s initiative), the reminiscences of 28 writers detailing their childhood reading, literary influences, favourite works and authors.

What struck me straight away was how well read these people were either of their own volition or the result of formal education.

Then another thing struck me. Of the 28 authors, 24 were born in the interwar years between 1919 and 1939. The other four were born earlier. What this means is that the formative years of childhood and adolescence were spent in the pre-television era. I think this makes a big difference to the amount of time and space available for reading, much more than now, where there are more distractions or perhaps alternatives to the written page. What people read then is also quite different from today. For these people there was a great emphasis on the Greek classics. John Donne turns up quite a lot, plus modern classics from Jane Austen, Dickens, Henry James and always the Russians and the French.

The taste of these writers is enormously eclectic and undiscriminated. J G Farrell gets excited at Richard Hughes’ In Hazzard. The novelist and poet Maureen Duffy describes a journey through AA Milne, Pinocchio, Kipling, Shakespeare, Keats, Scott, some other poets like Hopkins and Eliot, then the Russians and on to Joyce.

Sadly there are only seven women among the group and only one Australian, Peter Porter, who did most of his work in England, but at least he includes Biggles in his childhood reading as does Ralphael himself and so they deserve plaudits for that.

Maureen Duffy was one of the founders with Brigid Brophy of the Writer’s Action Group, who campaigned for a Public Lending Right (annual payments to authors based on public-library loans of their books), which after a battle, succeeded in 1979. The Group benefitted from some of the proceeds of this book.

[Ugh]

Twenty eight writers talk about the books that influenced them (in 1974). Most of them mention having started off with Treasure Island; one or two mention it in order to say they've not read it. Shakespeare is mentioned only positively; Dickens, Chaucer and Hardy get more of a mixed reception. Two people I hadn't heard of, Ivy Compton-Burnett and the Greek poet Cavafy, are praised by many. Also mostly praised are many I had heard of: Proust, Conrad, Lawrence, Austen, Waugh, Plato, Freud. I should have read Bookmarks with a memo pad in hand to note down authors and books, but as it is I take away the general reminder to keep reading, broadly and well. And the knowledge that nobody agrees on everyone. Except Shakespeare and Proust in French.