What novels should be like

The list of what one hasn't read is always far too long and shameful but there's only so much one can do and I've never agreed with John Peel's dictum that he was more interested in the music he hadn't heard than what he had. I'm not swapping what I know about for a sort of tombola of what I don't. That might not be quite what Dancing Jack Ravenscroft was suggesting but it's somehow implied.

I've made some inroads into the vast gaps in my reading but only into those bits that seem worth trying. The big Dostoevsky's are still to come, for instance, but it's no longer out of a sense of duty, it's because I think they might be any good. There may or may not be a list of things one should have read but even at a lowly university, 1978-81, there were students takinjg degrees in Eng Lit who were not doing Shakespeare. Maybe it's possible by now to get by in pop music without knowing about the Beatles, Tamla Motown and David Bowie but I can't see why one would want to.

Thus it was, after reading Wendy Lesser's book (somewhere below), that Henry James was given his long-belated chance. One can form an impression of a writer without reading them and Henry James, by reputation, seemed to be long-winded, florid and perhaps even turgid. But, then again, so might Proust be. So, Portrait of a Lady was dug out of somewhere in Portsmouth Central Library and delivered to my local one by those heroic suppliers of gratis literature. It's 600 pages but reaching page 132 has been a great pleasure.

Knowing that I risk howls of protest from the legions of devoted Janeites, it's what Jane Austen would be like if she was any good. I've tried three times with Jane Austen and I still don't get it. Portrait of a Lady looks to me like what I was hoping for from Jane. I take the formulation of my verdict from what I once heard on Radcliffe and Maconie when they were on R2 in the evenings, played a record and said, 'yeah,  it's what Queen would have been like if they'd been any good'.

Wise words from two people bright enough to know that Queen were awful.

Henry James is a great prose writer and I'm glad I found out in time. They are books that should be on the shelves but I've picked up on the idea that one doesn't need to own a copy of everything great just so that one can say one does. I'd love to have every Bach cantata on the shelves but there isn't world enough or time to be familiar with them all but I don't think Portrait will be the last I see of Henry James.

Perhaps some of those who graduated in English without doing Elizabethan Lit have since caught up by seeing Hamlet; if anybody had an idea of pop music that didn't include the Beatles or Motown have found out by now. While walking up and down the aisles of Tesco Express the other day, I sang along quietly to Here, There and Everywhere like one of the weirdos who doesn't care what people think and was almost in tears.

It's not fashionable, or possibly even desirable, to have a prescribed 'canon' of those things that are essential or 'truly great'. Let's hope not because, if Johnnie Walker has his say on 70's pop music, it will include Springsteen, The Eagles and Queen which would be dreary. So, it's not a cut-and-dried syllabus but some things are closer to it than others.

I have to have Finnegans Wake on the shelf even though it's highly unlikely I'll read much of it. I might not have Henry James there but I'll read plenty more. What is on the shelves can no longer be regarded as any sort of canon.