Friday 1 November 2019

Better than the rest

In my youth, my friends and I defined ourselves literarily. We always had a copy of a personal thin paperback with us.
I remember one friend who was into James Joyce. His carrier book was “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. He would have preferred “Ulysses”, but that was too thick and heavy to always lug around with you.
My taste was the Collected Essays of George Orwell.

We also used to trash popular television series. The kind of series my sister liked.
These were some of the ways we positioned ourselves as not being part of the low-brow herd.
No, we were not cultural snobs, we were just better than the rest.

Nowadays, some of this television trash of yesteryear is viewed fondly. The series are seen as examples of earlier British culture.

Nowadays, I always have a copy of my medicine list, not a paperback, with me.