Amongst all the goodness in the first issue of the New Inquiry magazine, one article in particular stood out – The Resentment Machine, by Freddy De Boer. It is available in full in that link back there, so you should probably read that rather than this, but anyway, it challenged me in all number of ways (I should probably offer some sort of summary here, but even after multiple readings I won’t do it justice and you’d be better off just reading the real thing, or failing that reading what follows in the next paragraph…), but one quote near the end particularly got to me.

“There is a problem, though. The value-through-what-is-consumed is entirely illusory. There is no there there. This is what you can really learn about a person by understanding his or her cultural consumption, the movies, music, fashion, media, and assorted other socially inflected ephemera: nothing. Absolutely nothing…There are no Apple people. Buying an iPad does nothing to delineate you from anyone else. Nothing separates a Budweiser man from a microbrew guy. That our society insists that there are differences here is only our longest con.“

Undoubtedly, on first reading this it felt right. We shouldn’t define ourselves or others by what we consume. There is more to life than consumerism. Society shouldn’t be so shallow to judge on cultural tastes, when that neglects people’s character, courtesy and values. Cultural consumption has little, if any, meaningful worth or value.

And yet. And yet on second reading it struck me more plainly that I was that guy – Mr Cultural Consumption Man. To at least some degree I define myself by my cultural consumption, and have almost certainly been shaped by it.

Getting into indie music in my early teens helped me define myself as someone different from my peers. I had my music. Then Britpop happened and everyone around me was suddenly into similar music, so I moved on to (what I thought, and probably still think) was better stuff, and definitely more obscure. I kept my music to myself, the eternal inverted snob. If I gave too much away, a little bit of me would be gone too. Which is pretty sad when you’re talking about  a bunch of middling indie records. But still.

In a broader sense that music moulded me. The early nineties was the last golden age of music journalism in the UK. The music press was still weekly, still vital and didn’t talk down to its readership. It brought in critical theory and wider cultural concerns to discussions about pop and rock music. It not only pointed to great bands, it pointed to great films, books and art. And so did the bands themselves. The Manic Street Preachers would have literary quotes in their sleevenotes, Suede would talk of art and arthouse film. Old Smiths articles and record covers would lead me to Oscar Wilde, 60s kitchen sink dramas and Warhol. Chances are I wasn’t growing up a sexist, racist pig, but having role models in indie music certainly led me on a path away from that and towards the vaguely left-leaning position I take today. They definitely widened my reading and viewing habits, opened up new worlds and new perspectives.

Even beer has defined me. Or I’ve defined myself by beer, I’m not sure which. In my youth, most of my contemporaries would be swilling lager, or alcopops. My friends and I gravitated towards the beer and ale. At first, it was probably because it was cheap and the pub we went to had a decent selection. But it also felt a little bit like a statement – we weren’t the lager louts, we were probably old men in training. Enjoying good beer probably helped shape my appreciation of good food, or of any proper craft. My experiences, through consumption, have for better or worse help make me, given me a certain worldview.

But of course I still get the argument above, and still feel a little guilty about it. Defining myself by what I consume is probably at best foolhardy and at worst a little dangerous. There is a deeper me than what I watch, or listen to, or drink. Just drinking good beer and listening to good music won’t make me a good person.

And however I may define bad taste doesn’t guarantee that someone is a bad person. I shouldn’t judge them. But naturally I do. I have matched certain tastes to certain behaviours, and have sometimes been right. I’ve met angry, inarticulate lager drinkers listening to awful bands, for example, but I’ve also met some great people with terrible tastes (by my definition). I’ve met Mac bores, and met lovely people who iWorship. While I suspect cultural consumption can be some sort of societal barometer, I know I shouldn’t trust myself to use it. Sometimes taste and character are coincedental, sometimes they reflect one another. It is difficult to decide which, so probably isn’t a helpful social strategy. It also makes me a terrible snob, inverted or otherwise.

But I do find it interesting that the article doesn’t really touch on cultural consumption in terms of reading books. I suspect that is just as much of an issue. I find it odd when I go to someone’s house and don’t see any books. I love to see what people are reading on the train. Perhaps to digress a little, but nevermind, one reason e-readers are so popular has be that you can read what you want without anyone judging you.

I don’t really know what the answer is, or what conclusion to make. Feel free to help me out in the comments. But, I think I’m leaning towards thinking that definition-by-consumption isn’t so bad when we define ourselves, providing that we don’t see it as a get-out – we don’t automatically become a good person because we read great literature, listen to wonderful music and drink fine beer. Surely to some extent we are the result of our experiences, and cultural consumption does colour those. We see society and humanity as much through books and films and music as we do through face-to-face interaction, for better or for worse.

But maybe we shouldn’t be so ashamed of what isn’t so cool or whatever. The whole guilty pleasures phenomenon seems built on saying publicly, “I might like this awful song, but because I’m aware that is it awful and that I shouldn’t like it please don’t judge me, it doesn’t make me a bad person.” Or maybe I’m just overthinking (or even underthinking) that one.

But defining others by what they consume is more problematic, albeit something pretty hardwired. At least for me. It will be a while before I can stop myself sighing at the guy playing on his iPad sipping a light beer from a large corporation. But I’ll keep trying. And I’ll keep trying to grasp this argument, because I suspect I’ve missed the point, or at least overlooked some key elements of it. Further installments may not follow, but I’ll keep on thinkin’, dear reader.

Image from the Nationaal Archief, via Flickr

Over the three books, I have dropped in on Bascombe’s life in his thirties, forties and fifties. Each book covers a few days – around Easter in the first book, Independence Day weekend in the second (obviously), and Thanksgiving in the last.

The books, taken as a whole, are far more than snapshots of a man. They are an incredibly rich and human take on the interior life. Bascombe may not be the ‘everyman’ we might wish him to be, and Ford suggests he is not that, but he still a wonderful conduit for exploring just what goes on inside our heads.

Meditative might not be the right term, but these books are built around the wonder and absurdity of the everyday, seen through the interior dialogue we all have. We each encounter drama every day, just on a very human scale. And we work through it in our heads. Well, at least I do. My interior dialogue rarely shuts up. Maybe that is why I liked Bascombe so much.

Bascombe does not live an extraordinary life. He is divorced with two children, and for most of the books is a realtor. Yet, like us all, Bascombe has passions, fears and hopes.

And I really haven’t wanted to leave his headspace as he ruminates over what life means as we get older, and how we can cope with whatever life throws our way.

Upon reading the final page I felt a real wave of emotion. Sadness, at bidding goodbye to a good friend. And happiness at having encountered such a character. I think I enjoyed The Lay of the Land the most, as by that point I had totally engaged with the character, and would happily have read 500 pages of him discussing anything. Which is pretty much what the book does, avoiding a normal plot. I could have read it forever.

Once I finally let myself finish the book, I had to pick up another book right away, to avoid some sort of readerly paralysis. After savouring each word, of getting so attached to one character, how could another book compete? At least with the first two I had another Bascombe book to look forward to. This time, I had to just get reading, to stop those thoughts leaving me book-less.

I wish I had it in me to come up with some sort of cogent and coherent argument about why I loved the Bascombe books so. Yet, I’m not sure I want to pick at the stitching and see how Ford did it. Not yet anyway. I just want to be happy that I let these books into my life.

So, do ever not want a book to end? How do you cope? And what is your take on Richard Ford?

Oh, and apologies for the gushing nature of this post. And my incredibly sporadic blogging schedule. I’ll work on it (the schedule, if not the gushing).

However, book tokens do present one challenge. In this age of internet shopping where virtually everything is online and cheaper, there are far fewer bookshops to go to, to actually spend the tokens.

I am by no means a militant buyer of books. In my eyes, Waterstones is by no means as evil as some critics make out. While they are, of course, a massive chain with huge purchasing power, there are still plenty of branches that bear the hallmark of a good manager.

Still, ideally, I like to try to support the independent booksellers that do remain. And so, I endeavoured to find a suitable location for my purchasing.

I got incredibly lucky. After a bit of an internet search, I chanced upon a likely candidate. The London Review of Books Bookshop in Bloomsbury turned out to be something of a revelation. Immediately, upon opening the door, it appealed to the book fetishist in me, with the heady scent of new books, and the vision of shelf upon shelf stacked with books on every conceivable subject.

It was a perfect example of the advantage independent booksellers can have over the internet, as a visitor is able to discover new books they never realised existed, or perhaps books they had forgotten about, or thought were out of print. Amazon does a pretty good job of guiding its customers, but there is no substitute for the joy and sheer usefulness of actually browsing a good bookshop.

I made something of a whistle-stop tour, and so will have to make time for a proper visit soon, especially as it has it own cake shop attached, which I’m sure is a fine place to review any new purchases. Plus, I like cake.

I may have to get my finances in check (or get more book tokens) first, as it could be an expensive return. In a short visit I picked up three books, and could have easily picked more, as everywhere I turned I saw another interesting (and often new to me) volume. It’s just one of those shops.

Image by rvacapinta via Flickr.

Or maybe it is just a phase. I do always read. A lot. But the medium isn’t always the same. Sometimes I just have to read a newspaper every day. Other times I realise I get most of my news online (although it’s not the same), or find my brain rotting from reading the free newspapers handed out in London and decide enough is enough.

Other times I’m all over magazines and, for want of a better word, journals. There is some fantastic magazine design out there – Wire magazine, in particular, and the late, lamented Plan B. There’s also some genuinely great writing hiding away in your old periodicals. The New Yorker is always a wonderful, informative and luxurious read. The New York Review of Books is similarly brain-nourishing. But it’s not all about mags from the Big Apple – how about When Saturday Comes and World Soccer, for pretty much peerless football coverage? Or Private Eye, still great after all these years?

But then, after a while, I realise that as immediate and bite-sized and shiny as magazines are, it is a good book that I really crave. A book that demands to be read, to be devoured. The sort of book that leaves you with a sense of loss when it’s over, because you just can’t read it anymore, that the story of those characters (real or imagined) has now finished.

And in an age of iPhones, iPads and all that jazz, and working in a role that falls directly under the banner of, ahem, ‘new media’, it’s interesting to me that all of this ‘old media’ still brings so much joy. These print formats are still vital to me. There is nothing quite like the feel, touch, smell, experience of books, magazines and newspapers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love computers and would be lost without the internet. But nothing will replace flicking through a newspaper in a pub, or a magazine in the garden on a sunny day, or an old book, curled up indoors on a winter’s night. Long may these simple pleasures last.

Image from Jasoon via Flickr