The Uncommon Reader

 

First, an understatement: “I enjoyed reading Alan Bennett’s “The Uncommon Reader “(A Novella) which tells of the Queen of England’s late-flowering enthusiasm for reading”. This is an understatement since this little book offered more than sheer enjoyment over the entire course of reading it. It is an Apology for Readers and who else is more fitting to defend us mere lover of books than the Queen of England herself? As a reader, mere reader, I felt my status “raised” after reading this little book. The story started when the Queen discovered a van (The City of Westminster’s travelling library) parked at the rear end of the Royal House where she met a ginger-head boy, Norman who works at the kitchen and with whom she took a certain liking for and therefore improved his station of being a dishwasher to a sort of “literary adviser”, an amanuensis. Discovering the delightful pull of books, the queen attends to her public duties but not without a book at hand and was either pestering her subjects about certain authors or dishing them books to read. But as good stories are, this book didn’t run out of people to antagonize on her enthusiasm.  Sir Kevin Scatchard, the queen’s private secretary, is one of those who’s determined to turn the queen from her reading saying that it is nothing but a withdrawal or an act of selfishness, something done for pleasure and therefore not an obligation. This is a little book fraught with British humour; dry, ascerbic, guaranteed to bring out a laugh from its sheer frankness and thoughtfulness. It is about one who loves books and about one who finds an importance in reading, be it for pleasure or enlightenment or a self inflicted duty. It is a journey of a bibliogamist and with mentions of names like Proust, Vikram Seth, Alice Munro, Cecil Beaton, it promises of a delightful and comical telling of an opsimath (one who learns only late in life) against those who finds reading a complete waste of one’s time.

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“Books are wonderful, aren’t they?” she smiled to the vice-chancellor, who concurred.

At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,’ she said, ‘they tenderise one.’

p. 105

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 She switched off the light on again and reached for her notebook and wrote: “You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.”

Then she went to sleep.

p. 101

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 “Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.”

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“Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity. But, as I say, my purpose is not primarily literary: analysis and reflection.