What’s a classic book that you think is overrated?
This is a very popular question and comes up regularly on social media. It is asked in terms of films, TV, actors, singers, writers and books. It is also based on a wholly false premise. There is no such thing as an overrated piece of popular culture. There is a piece of popular culture many people like and you do not. You are not in a position to declare it overrated because by doing so you are making a judgement on its quality and you cannot do that objectively. If you dislike it you may say that it is overrated, but what you actually mean is that it is not to your taste because you don’t understand its appeal to other people. No novel is perfect but no novel that is popular is devoid of quality, be that quality of writing, quality of plot or quality of characters. You may feel that it is poorly written or badly plotted or lacking in believable characters, but that is your opinion, not objective fact.
This question has often been asked by the type of person who wants to decide what is inherently good or bad. Throughout history, the people at the top of society have attempted to control what those underneath should and should not consume culturally speaking. High culture, meaning classical music, opera, ballet and serious novels were considered a source of education and improvement for those who partook in them. If a person consumed these sources of culture they were considered to be better than those around them. If, on the other hand, a person liked folk music, music halls, penny dreadfuls or pub culture then they were considered lower class and generally of lower intelligence. I have used the above examples because Victorian society was particularly engaged over the question of high and low culture, calling the latter popular culture. These days, liking for pop music, rom coms written or filmed, or what is seen by the people at the top as lowest common denominator film or TV would be the equivalent. We have a huge amount of culture and a huge range of voices to listen to and read, but we have kept to the old idea of high and low culture completely at odds with the situation where wider access is bringing new and sometimes uncomfortable voices to the fore.
Remember that the classic novels you are judging were the popular culture of the day. Dickens wrote in weekly installments in much the same way as any other writer of the time who needed to make money. It is only the powers that be which have told us that his novels are classic novels. We need to remove those notions from the discussions because to consider them means we are thinking about things in the way that is most acceptable to the people in charge. If you like a classic novel, Classical Music, ballet or a painting by Constable, all well and good, but if you don’t like it remember that it is only your opinion, an opinion that means as much as any other and certainly no more.
What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living?
Over the course of our marriage, Janet and I have been required to live a minimalist lifestyle for significant periods due to lack of money. Those times have been tough due to the constant requirement to watch expenditure, but they have also been times where we made the absolute best of every penny and where we prioritised the family unit.
The final year of university for me was also the year that Janet and I got married. So, we started off our marriage with one income and made the best of it. To be honest, that was the pattern for the first couple of decades of our family life as either Janet or I went out to work and the other person stayed at home to look after the children. So we became experts at cheap days out with picnics and large bottles of drinks. We tried to go to McDonald’s for our evening meal where we could because the children saw it as a real treat. I became a master of the cheapest way to shop whilst still making healthy and filling meals. I’m still brilliant at that to this day. Janet and I hardly ever went out but we were happy to forgo that in order to make sure the children could go to clubs. I gave up drinking for nearly a decade and never really went back to it. Those times were tough in some ways but we were able to find so many opportunities to bond as a family because of it. As a result we are still close with our children and when they and we get together we enjoy each other’s company. I think we have benefited from the way we had to live within our fairly limited means. As a result we are going to be quite happy to go back to this type of minimalist lifestyle as retirement beckons.
What’s a thing you were completely obsessed with as a kid?
as a non diagnosed child on the Autistic Spectrum I have always obsessed over various things. I have written about these obsessions at length on this blog. So, what was my main obsession as a child?
Reading would be at the heart of my childhood from the age of about 6 or so. As soon as I could read for myself I could escape from the real world and enter the world of fantasy or fact depending on my mood. I read different types of books for pleasure and information. The Ladybird history books were a much loved and much valued series that introduced me to famous people throughout the ages. They were almost all British, so people like Captain Scott, Horatio Nelson, Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale became heroes of mine. They were people who had led extraordinary lives and done things that had changed society or entire continents in their time. I learnt about them and was eager to tell people what I had learnt, usually until they told me to shut up!
Alongside these books I loved books fantasy and humour. The books that most satisfied this need were C S Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the Target Dr Who books and Michael Bond’s Paddington books. I have very clear memories of buying some of these books at a lovely village bookshop in Felsted where I spent the summer with my grandparents. All the books were read and reread to the point where I was almost word perfect on them, or at least I knew every twist and turn of the story. I enjoyed the familiarity, perhaps because it made me feel safe. These books were old friends who I could turn to at any time and I knew that they would never let me down unlike people.
During those years I also loved television. Blue Peter would give me the factual information I craved. Screen Test and Top of the Form would give me the opportunity to test myself against the questions and the contestants. Doctor Who would introduce different monsters and challenges every few weeks and a year or so later I would be able to read about these monsters in the latest Target books. Programmes like Bagpuss and The Clangers would give me the safety of familiarity and the chance to escape to more innocent, simpler times. Everything I craved in books was there in the corner of my room and I ended up splitting much of my childhood between the two.
What’s the most interesting local custom you’ve encountered?
The idea of a local custom carries with it the idea of tourists who see or experience something and it becomes an anecdote when they get back. I want to steer clear of that superficial approach. What I am going to reflect on is something that I initially appreciated but which ended up causing me a lot of problems when I lived in Japan for three years. Honne and Tatemae are your true self and your public facade respectively. Your Honne only makes an appearance with friends and family, and perhaps not even with them, if it can carry the risk of crossing firm cultural boundaries. Your Tatemae is the face you present to the world and is the one that prioritises fitting in and meeting cultural expectations above all else. As a gaijin (foreigner) I was not expected to be quite as careful, at least not initially. However, after a while the pressure to conform with certain expectations becomes greater and can lead to problems. It was certainly the case with me.
During my time in Japan I took people at face value, and as they didn’t argue with me or explicitly express displeasure I assumed I was doing OK. It turned out I wasn’t and that certain aspects of my behaviour did not endear me to my hosts. The biggest issue was my priorities, where looking after my family was first and foremost. This meant that when I was invited to work parties I always declined because my wife was having problems with settling in and I was not about to abandon her. This was a cultural faux pas of quite some magnitude! By consistently ignoring work parties I was insulting my coworkers because work parties are all but compulsory in Japan. However, to avoid conflict, no one ever told me. I was only informed in my third year there by a teacher at one of my schools who had heard that I was unsatisfactory and that my first office were desperate to get rid of me! If the cultural imperative of keeping harmony had been ignored early on I think things would have been very different. Janet found out the full extent of my unpopularity when her friend, who was Welsh but had been living in Japan for over a decade and had married a Japanese professor told her. I was really shocked and it soured the rest of my time with many of the people I was working with. In the classroom no one had any complaints but out of the classroom I felt like I could no longer trust anyone at either my first office or my office for the third and final year. I ended leaving under a cloud and with a poor view of my time there that lasted for quite a while until maybe four or five years later I was able to put it in perspective.
Interestingly the Honne and Tatemae and the reluctance to have open conflict had some parallels with the UK, but in the UK I could read between the lines to some extent, something that I had no ability to do in Japan. Obviously, nowadays, the social norms in the UK have been pretty much ripped up. People play their music out loud, have their devices on speaker, show outright aggression to anyone with a different point of view and use intimidation to get their way. That, sadly, is the future of the UK as social order continues to break down. Being secretly despised turned out to be preferable and I would go back to that in a heartbeat!
