A visit to the library

I went to the library yesterday and came home with five books, three of them were novels written by women. The other two were not novels. Three novels, all written by female writers - and this is not unusual. There is something about books written by some women writers that I like. Put it another way. There is something about books written by men that I don't like. Is that true?

Not entirely.

There are plenty of books written by women that I don't like. In fact, when I think about it, most of the books in the library, whether written by men or women, are books that I don't like, won't ever like. It's the same with poetry.

I scan the shelves of poetry and hope, hopelessly, to find something that rises above the awful mediocrity of human futility. And fail, more often than not. Not always, it's true. Occasionally, I light upon an RS Thomas or a Gillian Clarke and my spirits rise and respond. But not always. Not often.

One of the other, non-novel, books I came home with yesterday is a book called Serious Poetry by Peter McDonald. I'm looking forward to getting into that and engaging brain to brain with the author and with the poets 'from Yeats to Hill', grappling with purpose and intent, 'form and authority', as it says. The other 'non-novel' is, interestingly, also related to poetry. It is Now all roads lead to France by Matthew Hollis, the acclaimed biography of Edward Thomas. I revere Edward Thomas - it is a sickness of our age; my age, at least. But even then, much - most?- of his poetry leaves me cold, or worse, lukewarm. I revere him as a poet not so much for the product but for the potential; because of his evident integrity.

[At this point I go to my shelves, the small, dark-stained wood, three-shelf bookcase that my Grandfather made (or is that another personal urban myth?), and search for my book of Edward Thomas - Edward Thomas: Collected Poems, with foreword by Walter de la Mare. It is a slim volume alongside those of DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. [I do have another novel out from the library at the moment, The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. And he's a man.] Nothing ever quite touched the *** (supply adjective: simplicity, success, majesty) of Adlestrop but Adlestrop would not exist but for the rest. We write to write one *** (supply noun: work, success, ...) and we are lucky - blessed - if we achieve even that.]

I have a theory. Women writers, some women writers, are are able to approach closer to their truth than most men. And their truth, the truth of the individual writer, is our truth. Most men are evading it; and most women for that matter. Fewer men seem to be able to find that bridge across the chasm that connects them with this inner integrity. You know it when you see it, and you see it if you're really looking for it.

If all this sounds like elitist guff, I don't think it is. All human beings (have the capacity to) recognise (this kind of) truth. In most of us, however, this capacity has been suppressed either by the imposition of false authority or by - that is, as the result of - fear. It is the writer's job, the artist's job, to enable reconnection.

What did I bring home?

Suffer the little children by Donna Leon

Something might happen by Julie Myerson

The gravediggers daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

I'll report back later.

Ends