06.11.07

Its fight club not book club

Posted in Feminism, Sunday Times Columns at 7:07 pm by Sarah

The sister rang me last week. A friend was setting up a book club, was I interested? Sure! I’d love to be in a book club. I’m middle class and more middle-aged than I’d like to say. I have a tastefully decorated home to which I can proudly invite my peers and a reasonable repertoire of one pot suppers I can claim were no trouble to prepare. Due to the pressures of relocation and motherhood, a couple of vacancies have arisen for female friendships and presumably a reading club would supply plenty of applicants. Mostly, book club membership is so appropriate for a woman these days. There I was being all bourgeois again. I felt queasy and backed out.

It reminded me of the day my lunch got cancelled and I found myself in Dublin city centre with two unscheduled hours. Free time being rarer than a bare lamp post in election time, I was delighted at the prospect. Brilliant! I could go shopping. The recognition of the acquisitive instinct annoyed me. How pathetic. A thirty something yummy mummy gets an adrenalin surge at the prospect of a stroll around the homeware department of Arnotts. Surely I could do better. I rang around and found a friend with no lunch plans and was thus saved from my basest instincts.

I love reading but book clubs aren’t really about the books. While some regard them as a form of proletarian revolution against academics, they are a social rather than literary affair. The fact that most clubs are exclusively female says little about feminine bookishness. Women like talking to other women and it’s hard to arrange single sex gatherings. Men can meet up without women to watch, or more rarely, participate in sports. “Book club” equals “the match” in terms of socially acceptable excuses for women to escape children and husbands. It’s a recognised man-free zone and women like it like that so they can talk freely.

You can talk about most things with the modern man but a few taboos remain. Some female conversations like fake tanning, children’s bowel movements and clothes can be discussed in male company with their indulgence. However, the subject of yeast infections is best avoided. They like to believe its all Georgia O’Keefe down there, so one might as well leave them their illusions. Also out are negative comments about your husband since that’s an act of betrayal. Complaining to another woman about your spouse is practically expected and she’ll cluck in sympathy but won’t hold his crimes against him personally. Sure, they’re all the bloody same.

However, the freedom to speak openly can be one of the drawbacks too. The whole cocktail is so dangerous. I know of one non-drinking book club but the rest involve a lot of wine. Women in their 30’sand 40’s are statistically more likely to suffer from intense PMT symptoms. Their self-esteem is probably shot since they’re convinced they’re unattractive, bad mothers, or not successful enough.

If you add in the pressure to say something intelligent about a book, the hothouse conditions of a contrived debate are the emotional equivalent of lighting the fuse. There’s going to be a row and I can do without rows. The only solution is the token gay man.

Of course, it’s not just about women. The fundamental structure of a reading club is designed to create tension. One friend is in a male book club and the post club phone calls are intensifying. Resentments are too easily created and nourished in what seemed such a civilised and worthy affair at its inception. I anticipate the kind of escalation familiar to poker schools. The bets get higher and higher until you end up watching two players cut cards for unaffordable stakes. I’m not sure what constitutes high literary stakes, but it’s going to end, as all things do, badly.

The acrimony appears to start with the selection of a book. If you are thinking of starting a club its worthwhile giving particular attention to the mechanism by which the books are picked. Does everyone take turns nominating a book or are a number of options put forward for discussion and a decision made. Is that decision by consensus or vote?

You can see where the fault lines are. If you don’t have to nominate a book, the potential for takeover is huge. One or two people impose their taste on everyone else, while disdaining the quieter members for their meekness who in turn resent the minority domination. This is a dynamic guaranteed to end in acrimony.

I favour everyone being mandated to nominate a book in turn, but this does place pressure on the selector. If the book is bad, it’s your fault. Furthermore, the competitive streak is bound to kick in as I know it would in my case. I’d be looking for the cleverest, most meaningful book to prove how brilliant I was. Depending on the time of the month, if someone didn’t like it I’d either despise them for being so stupid or despise myself for picking a useless book. You see, when I say I’m afraid of joining a book club I really mean I’m afraid of myself.

I think a random external factor should be introduced to the nomination process. You’d have to pick whatever Ryan, or Richard and Judy or Oprah’s reading that month. Although I hear Oprah gave up her club because she couldn’t find a good book to read.

But that’s just the book picking. What if you didn’t have time to read the book, or you hated it and gave up after the first 50 pages. What then? Are you supposed to apologise? What if you’re not sorry you didn’t read the stupid book? Are you judged? Do people phone each other the next day and talk about you? For a borderline paranoid personality like mine the potential for fighting with book club members in your head all day is enormous.

Let’s say you do read the book and have strong feelings about it. I used to debate in college and am familiar with the parliamentary rules of argument. Someone proposes a thesis and another member rebuts it. Points of information are made and responded too. In the end, the cleverest person wins. The loser gracefully acknowledges the superiority of their opponent’s intellect and secretly vows to get them another day. I don’t think it works like that in book club.

I think in reading clubs everyone’s opinion is valid and must be acknowledged even if it’s wrong. Otherwise, there are tears. I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I think some people’s opinions are better than others. The more I think about this, the more I realise : I might be better off without a book club, but the club is definitely better off without me.

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