In Praise Of Bitterness And Begrudgery

A guy I know, let’s call him Reed Farrel Coleman, isn’t too impressed with the idea that I review books for a living. I don’t, as it happens, because very few people earn a living from reviewing books, but reviewing can be a nice way of occasionally topping up your meagre freelance income. Anyway, Reed’s point is that writers really shouldn’t sit in judgement on their colleagues. This misses the point for me - I don’t consider bad writers my colleagues, and I wouldn’t presume to consider good writers my colleagues either. In my head, I’m someone who has managed to get a couple of books published without getting tarred and feathered in the process. I’m not a writer, unfortunately, and as time goes by, it becomes less and less likely that I will become one.
  It did occur to me at some point during last weekend - no idea where the revelation came from, or what the catalyst was - that Reed might be right, given that I’ve grown terribly bitter about books in the last while. There’s two reasons for this, I think - one, I’ve been commissioned to review more and more books over the last year or so; and two, my own writing career (koff) fallen off a cliff. All of which, you’ll probably agree, is perfectly understandable, especially the bit about my own writing falling off a cliff, but it’s all a bit wearyingly predictable too.
  Today, reading Declan Hughes’ latest, THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, for the purposes of review, I came across this little snippet. Basically, an Irish Times journo, a failed scriptwriter, has railed against Jack Donovan, an Irish film director who has made it big in Hollywood, and one of Jack’s acolytes rails back thusly:

“And now he turns around and he has a go at everyone who has succeeded … And it’s not even for me, or Jack, he can’t really hurt us, it’s people starting out, people in the early stages, he’s on them like a ton of bricks, willing them to fail, like the worst kind of begrudger. You know, just once, I’d like to see someone nail the cunt, tell him the reason he’s like this has nothing to do with, what, critical judgement or artistic standards, no, it’s because deep down he knows he’s a failure, a fucking failure, he tried to be something and he failed, and rather than accept it, and own it, he just lashes out at anyone who stayed in the game.”

  Nicely put, that man. And isn’t ‘begrudgery’ a grand word?
  Here’s the thing, though - I can’t speak for the quality of Jack Donovan’s movies, given that Declan Hughes invented the guy and his films, but I can fully understand why a failed writer might get bitter, especially if he’s reading books all the way through - as he’s bound to do, when he’s being commissioned to review - that he’d rather toast marshmallows on, if he wasn’t afraid they’d poison the marshmallows. Because while there are far, far worse things in life than having to read a rubbish novel knowing you’re going to get paid for writing about it afterwards, it’s still a huge pain in the hoop to do so, knowing that there are so many good books out there that you’ll never get the time to read.
  Because that’s the flip side, I think, of being a failed writer - there are few readers as well positioned as a failed writer to truly appreciate a good book. And whereas a couple of years back I could have simply set aside a bad book after 10 pages or so, before I actually started gagging on my bile, these days I need to grind right through to the end, which is the equivalent of rubbing my own nose in dog-dirt. By the same token, reading a good book - and Declan Hughes’ CITY OF LOST GIRLS, happily enough for the purpose of this post, falls into this category - inspires the kind of envy that generally, and simply, goes, ‘Shit, I wish I was that good.’
  There’s a question in the regular Q&A that I run on Crime Always Pays which is for me the one that gives the most insight into a writer, or as much insight as can be gleaned from a 10-question Q&A. It’s the one about God appearing, and saying you can only read or write, and which will it be. For me, it’s a no-brainer - I’d read, because the books I want to read are better than anything I’m capable of writing. And, given that I’m a failed writer, Beckett’s dictum on failing and failing again better notwithstanding, the last thing I want to be reading is a book not fit to lace my own books’ shoelaces, if you’ll forgive the mangled metaphor.
  Which is to say that I am growing increasingly bitter about books, but about bad books specifically; and given that I’m a shallow bugger at the best of times, and that jealousy, envy and bitterness as so easily accessed, no one is more surprised than me to discover that I’m learning to appreciate a good book more and more as time goes by.
  There are, as Raymond Chandler said, only two kinds of books, good and bad. Leaving aside the money, anyone who isn’t embittered by what a bad book costs them in terms of reading time should probably stop reading and take up crochet instead.