By John Lawton
Life is too short to read any book twice. I firmly believe that. I undermine it, repeatedly. How many times have I read War and Peace? I forget. Coriolanus? I forget that too. But … should that not be in capital letters? …. BUT … this is a different list. Books I intend to re-read … years after I first read them … hell’s own paving stones.
1. The History of Mr Polly. HG Wells. First published in 1910, read by me circa 1960. Is Alfred the original hippie? A quiet, disappointed man who says ‘fukkit’ to everything and escapes to the river, fishing, omelettes … and one last struggle with his personal Goliath.. Spoiler alert; he wins. Manslaughter, arson and lunch. Who could ask for more?
2. Call for the Dead. John le Carré. First published in 1961. Read by me in 1963. George Smiley’s stunning debut, appearing at a moment when James Bond was about to become dominant after the new president ‘endorsed’ Fleming’s novels, (thinks, should I ask Donald to endorse mine?) and offering a clear alternative of the spook universe. A few years later it made a pretty good film. For me James Mason will always be the definitive Smiley. I gather JLC did not like the film. I will admit casting Harriet Andersson as Anne was not a great idea, but it doesn’t kill the film.
3. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Lenny Bruce. First published in Playboy over 1964/65 (I am not making this up). Read by me in 1978. I’d put this on the English syllabus in every high school in UK & USA. The power of shock tactics. Why coming at things from left field matters. Lifting the veil, as Coleridge put it.
4. The ABC of Reading. Ezra Pound. First published in 1934. Read by me in 1979. I cannot pretend to be a fan of Pound’s cantos. Ole Ezra might be an example of the writer whose life is more interesting than anything he wrote, but this is a stimulating guide to reading poetry … anyone’s poetry.
5. A Fan’s Notes. Frederick Exley. First published in 1966. Read by me during the long lockdown of 2020. Somebody left it in the house, pages loose, bound up with a rubber band. Call it fate. This is a ‘fictional memoir’ … Dylan Thomas meets Brendan Behan meets F.Scott Fitzgerald. Debauchery and degeneracy. Bliss.
6. The Honourable Schoolboy. John Le Carré. First published in 1977. Read by me in 2018. I got to this novel rather late. I think I had a prolonged fit of not wanting to read JLC after a deeply tedious, deeply brown BBC adaptation of the novels that bracket this one. Followed by a messy, truncated adaptation of the first (Tinker etc.) in 2011. No idea what made me pick up a 500pp tome, but (another BUT) it is his masterpiece. Nominally a Smiley novel, the central character is an upper class tearaway called Jerry Westerby. In his collection of essays, The Pigeon Tunnel, JLC recounts meeting a ‘Jerry Westerby’ … a touch of write it it and he will come. The nearest thing to a romp JLC ever wrote.
7. Myra Breckinridge. Gore Vidal. First published in 1968. Read by me in 1973. I worked with Gore a few times. False modesty was not his vice. On a visit to Amalfi circa 1988 he said, “Before Myra there was the novel. After Myra it was something else.” He was … er … right. Myra B was a gamechanger. The sequel, Myron, should be read straight after. Do not pause.
8. Richard III. Wm. Shakespeare. First published in God-knows-when. Read and seen by me in 1959. I used to kid myself I was an actor; the nerdy kid in glasses who cannot kick or catch a ball retreats into the assumption of personae — a common enough psychological phenomenon. It took several failed auditions (and several director’s reprimands for adlibbing on stage) to convince me otherwise. BUT (the last such) it all began with this bloke; a god’s-gift of a part that started me acting … and writing — my earliest efforts are lost (thank God) and were reworkings of Richard in shabby couplets and with frequent recourse to the word ‘bastard’; as long as you said it was in Shakespeare you could get away with that. As history it’s nonsense, but (oh, that word again) as a crime drama it is surely unsurpassed.
9. Early Autumn. Robert B. Parker. First published in 1980. Read by me in 1987. It’s hard to pick a Spenser favourite. In fact the only outright bummer was A Catskill Eagle (1985) which reads as though it were written to order and is twice as long as any other Spenser. Parker has many imitators. None come close. RBP was the god of the PI novel.
10. The Laws of Our Fathers. Scott Turow. First published in 1996. Read by me the same year. This might well be the definitive novel of my generation, by the finest crime writer of my generation. (I’ve never been happy with term ‘baby boomer’; it says too little. We are The Lebowski Generation. “I have news for you Mr Lebowski. The bums lost!”) Not a quick read at 800 + pp … maybe life is a tad longer than I anticipate.
J. Lebowski Lawton, © 2025.
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