一剑指北

This is a tale of telling tales in two cities: London and New York. Like all writers, I read. All the time - except when I am writing. I never thought I'd make more money reading than writing. But as a “reader in residence” at hotels, I've discovered that I can.

It all started when, once upon a time, I checked into a hotel abroad without a book. Within an hour I was reading the side of the toothpaste tube. The Bible was starting to look good. Bookless in a hotel is hell. A hotel is meant to be a home from home - a hometel. But you can't have a home without books. Five-star establishments have long housed writers, most famously Fay Weldon at the Savoy. But never a dedicated reader. Until me.

I approached the Andaz hotel in Liverpool Street, Central London, known for quirky cultural exploits, and was invited to spend April reading there. The response, from guests and media, was phenomenal. I was besieged, averaging four readings a day from a 7am swoosh through the papers for City types right through to bedtime stories. Would-be listeners e-mailed from New Zealand to New Delhi and Time, Newsweek and The New York Times all picked up on the story. Since then I've read Nancy Mitford on a big white bed seven storeys up on the roof of the Rockefeller Centre.

At the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan I made a businessman cry into his BlackBerry (he was still checking his e-mails as I read) over Brideshead Revisited. At Babington House, near Bath, I sent one woman and her boyfriend to sleep with Dickens. Next month I'll be going back to the Andaz and, later this year, to the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh. I'll be staying in Room 552 where J.K. Rowling finished weaving the Harry Potter spell.

“I never thought I'd make a living reading to people,” says Ella Jolly, a fellow reader in residence. “I volunteered with the reader organisation at university and now run reading groups across the country. We read poems, short stories and whole novels out loud - Dickens can take up to five months, two hours at a time. I'm doing Chekhov with some warehouse workers in Manchester. Literature has always been a force for personal change and social reform.”

“We run more than 80 free groups nationally,” says Jolly. “We're growing faster than ever. Doris Lessing and Seamus Heaney love our work. Bibby Line Group has hired me to read to its employees - the first company to do so. It's boosting morale and productivity and it's fun.”

Alain De Botton, Geoff Dyer, Susan Elderkin and others recently opened the School of Life in Bloomsbury, Central London. This cute little shop offers “intelligent instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life”. Among their evening and weekend courses is bibliotherapy - based on the premise that books make you feel better. They've hired me as a reader. For £50 an hour I'll read a story of your choosing or discuss your personal story and maybe help you find a new direction. I don't do accents - even and especially not for Proust. A small charge may be made for Dick Francis. All requests considered (except Dan Brown). I won't tuck you in - not even for Dracula. Couples welcome.

But back to the hotels.

To help listeners choose I have a menu with 25 books in five categories: Classic & Comforting, Dark & Disconcerting, Cool & Contemporary, Guilty Pleasures and Books You Think You Should Read But Probably Never Will.

At the Andaz in London guests ordered me like room service. I appeared at their door in my stripy Paul Smith pyjamas clutching their chosen book. Most readees were, perhaps surprisingly, women around 35 travelling alone. Sadly, not one had been read to since childhood, and maybe not even then. Even more tragically, not one so much as suggested any sort of extra. A few even fell asleep. London's hit titles were Pride and Prejudice and Hollywood Wives.

You can read but not everyone can be a reader. Just try getting your mouth round Jackie Collins. With a complete stranger - a stranger you're not even sleeping with. I gulped on my first “tit”. Before the blush bloomed I'd done glossy lips and thrusting buttocks. Eventually I became, well, hardened.

Reading aloud is embarrassing - never more so than with that first sentence. Then slowly you both relax and before you know it you're in another world together: Regency Bath, Narnia, anywhere but here and now.

“We choose literature with a capital L,” says Jolly. “We like to read books people don't think they'll like - books you could write a PhD on, to show you don't need a PhD to read them. That said, we've no banned books.”

At the Grand Hyatt I was discouraged from reading in bedrooms - mine or yours. Allocated a “neutral appro- priate space” by the pleasant but nervous manager, I read in a function room periodically rattled by trains leaving Grand Central. Takers were few and far between - CNN was far bigger than me that weekend. The few brave souls who did drop by always asked for something “English” (I'm Scottish). So I read a bit from Brideshead about memories being like birds. Without fail, male or female, young or old, they cried. It may just have been the accent.

The rooftop party at the Rockefeller Centre, for the launch of a new luxury brand, was different. The organ- isers built a library and put in a bed for me. Snuggling on my left is a Manhattan socialite dripping with diamonds, on my right is a young architect with sideburns. They listen eagerly to Miss Mitford as I strain over the DJ. Afterwards I walk back to the Hyatt down Fifth Avenue in my pyjamas holding a stack of books. No one bats an eyelid. Now there's a story.

Guilty Pleasures

Bath Triangle by Georgette Heyer

Lucky by Jackie Collins

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

Classic and comforting

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb and other classic fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm

Dark and disconcerting

Miriam: short story by Truman Capote

Dracula by Bram Stoker

or Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

Contemporary

Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love by Dan Rhodes

Hotel World by Ali Smith

This Book Will Save Your Life by A. M. Homes

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Books You'd Never Actually Read Yourself But Would Like To (Improving Literature)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Ulysses by James Joyce

A la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust

[ 本帖最后由 一剑指北 于 2009-5-28 15:55 编辑 ]