When people talk about their fondness for books, I wonder if they’re really talking about their fondness for reading. It’s rather like confusing the plate for the food. I mean, I like a beautifully printed and bound book as much as anybody else but I don’t need a houseful of them, any more than I need a houseful of beautiful dinner plates. About twelve would do fine; that, and a good recipe book."
Just as Somerset Maugham kept "A Writer's Notebook", I jotted down the above quote in my notebook some time ago but forgot to add its source. It may have been Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future" - in fact, I'm pretty sure it was - but don't quote me on it. I was reminded of it as I leaved through a beautifully bound copy of "The Quiet American" at the Vinnies op-shop and wondered if I should buy it. I already own all of Graham Greene's book, but unlike Douglas Adams — and stretching his metaphor almost to breaking-point — I can’t help feeling some food tastes better when eaten off a beautiful plate.
A woman, already with an armful of books, looked at the spine of my book and asked me if I could recommend a book by Graham Greene. "Why don't you try 'The End of the Affair'?" I suggested. "What, just the end? Not the whole thing?" she replied. On second thoughts, I suggested to her a recently formed book club in the Bay where she didn't have to read at all. As their blurb suggests, "The idea is to have fun and make new friends. We choose books that are easy to read, and that have been made into movies so you don't even have to read if you don't want to".
"The End of the Affair" has been made into a movie twice, but while I have read the book from cover to cover, I have yet to watch the movie to the end. Maybe I will now, if only to see if this quote appears in it:
"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity." [page 46]
And, yes, I did buy that beautifully bound copy of "The Quiet American".
