The Uncommon Reader: A Novella
by Alan BennettAlan Bennett
Paperback(First Edition)
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Buy Online, Pick up in Store When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.
With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
Edition description:
Alan Bennett has been one of England's leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His work includes the Talking Heads television series, and the stage plays Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, and The Madness of King George III. His play, The History Boys, filmed in 2006, won six Tony Awards, including best play. His memoir, Untold Stories, was a number-one bestseller in the United Kingdom.
At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.
'Now that I have you to myself,' said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, 'I've been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.'
'Ah,' said the president. 'Oui.'
The 'Marseillaise' and the national anthem made for a pause in the proceedings, but when they had taken their seats Her Majesty turned to the president and resumed.
'Homosexual and jailbird, was he nevertheless as bad as he was painted? Or, more to the point,' and she took up her soup spoon, 'was he as good?'
Unbriefed on the subject of the glabrous
playwright and novelist, the president looked wildly about for his minister of culture. But she was being addressed by the Archbishop of Can-terbury.
'Jean Genet,' said the Queen again, helpfully. 'Vous le connaissez?'
'Bien sûr,' said the president.
'Il m'intéresse,' said the Queen.
'Vraiment?' The president put down his spoon. It was going to be a long evening.
It was the dogs' fault. They were snobs and ordinarily, having been in the garden, would have gone up the front steps, where a footman generally opened them the door.
Today, though, for some reason they careered along the terrace, barking their heads off, and scampered down the steps again and round the end along the side of the house, where she could hear them yapping at something in one of the yards.
It was the City of Westminster travelling library, a large removal-like van parked next to the bins outside one of the kitchen doors. This wasn't a part of the palace she saw much of, and she had certainly never seen the library parked there before, nor presumably had the dogs, hence the din, so having failed in her attempt to calm them down she went up the little steps of the van in order to apologise.
The driver was sitting with his back to her, sticking a label on a book, the only seeming borrower a thin ginger-haired boy in white overalls crouched in the aisle reading. Neither of them took any notice of the new arrival, so she coughed and said, 'I'm sorry about this awful racket,' where-upon the driver got up so suddenly he banged his head on the Reference section and the boy in the aisle scrambled to his feet and upset Photography & Fashion.
She put her head out of the door. 'Shut up this minute, you silly creatures,' which, as had been the move's intention, gave the driver/librarian time to compose himself and the boy to pick up the books.
'One has never seen you here before, Mr . . .'
'Hutchings, Your Majesty. Every Wednesday, ma'am.'
'Really? I never knew that. Have you come far?'
'Only from Westminster, ma'am.'
'And you are …?'
'Norman, ma'am. Seakins.'
'And where do you work?'
'In the kitchens, ma'am.'
'Oh. Do you have much time for reading?'
'Not really, ma'am.'
'I'm the same. Though now that one is here I suppose one ought to borrow a book.'
Mr Hutchings smiled helpfully.
'Is there anything you would recommend?'
'What does Your Majesty like?'
The Queen hesitated, because to tell the truth she wasn't sure. She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn't have hobbies. Jogging, growing roses, chess or rock climbing, cake decoration, model aeroplanes. No. Hobbies involved preferences and preferences had to be avoided; pref-
erences excluded people. One had no preferences. Her job was to take an interest, not to be interested herself. And besides, reading wasn't doing. She was a doer. So she gazed round the book-lined van and played for time. 'Is one allowed to borrow a book? One doesn't have a ticket?'
'No problem,' said Mr Hutchings.
'One is a pensioner,' said the Queen, not that she was sure that made any difference.
'Ma'am can borrow up to six books.'
'Six? Heavens!'
Meanwhile the ginger-haired young man had made his choice and given his book to the librarian to stamp. Still playing for time, the Queen picked it up.
'What have you chosen, Mr Seakins?' expecting it to be, well, she wasn't sure what she expected, but it wasn't what it was. 'Oh. Cecil Beaton. Did you know him?'
'No, ma'am.'
'No, of course not. You'd be too young. He always used to be round here, snapping away. And a bit of a tartar. Stand here, stand there. Snap, snap. And there's a book about him now?'
'Several, ma'am.'
'Really? I suppose everyone gets written about sooner or later.'
She riffled through it. 'There's probably a picture of me in it somewhere. Oh yes. That one.
Of course, he wasn't just a photographer. He designed, too. Oklahoma!, things like that.'
'I think it was My Fair Lady, ma'am.'
'Oh, was it?' said the Queen, unused to being contradicted. 'Where did you say you worked?' She put the book back in the boy's big red hands.
She had still not solved her problem, knowing that if she left without a book it would seem to Mr Hutchings that the library was somehow lacking. Then on a shelf of rather worn-looking
volumes she saw a name she remembered. 'Ivy Compton-Burnett! I can read that.' She took the book out and gave it to Mr Hutchings to stamp.
'What a treat!' she hugged it unconvincingly before opening it. 'Oh. The last time it was taken out was in 1989.'
'She's not a popular author, ma'am.'
'Why, I wonder? I made her a dame.'
Mr Hutchings refrained from saying that this wasn't necessarily the road to the public's heart.
The Queen looked at the photograph on the back of the jacket. 'Yes. I remember that hair, a roll like a pie-crust that went right round her head.' She smiled and Mr Hutchings knew that the visit was over. 'Goodbye.'
He inclined his head as they had told him at the library to do should this eventuality ever arise, and the Queen went off in the direction of the garden with the dogs madly barking again, while Norman, bearing his Cecil Beaton, skirted a chef lounging outside by the bins having a cigarette and went back to the kitchens.
Shutting up the van and driving away, Mr Hutchings reflected that a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett would take some reading. He had never got very far with her himself and thought, rightly, that borrowing the book had just been a polite gesture. Still, it was one that he appreciated and
as more than a courtesy. The council was always threatening to cut back on the library, and the patronage of so distinguished a borrower (or customer, as the council preferred to call it) would do him no harm.
'We have a travelling library,' the Queen said to her husband that evening. 'Comes every Wednesday.'
'Jolly good. Wonders never cease.'
'You remember Oklahoma!?'
'Yes. We saw it when we were engaged.' Extraordinary to think of it, the dashing blond boy he had been.
'Was that Cecil Beaton?'
'No idea. Never liked the fellow. Green shoes.'
'Smelled delicious.'
'What's that?'
'A book. I borrowed it.'
'Dead, I suppose.'
'Who?'
'The Beaton fellow.'
'Oh yes. Everybody's dead.'
'Good show, though.'
And he went off to bed glumly singing 'Oh, what a beautiful morning' as the Queen opened her book.
Excerpted from The Uncommon Reader by Forelake Ltd. Copyright © 2007 by Forelake Ltd. Published in September 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
The following author biography and list of questions about The Uncommon Reader are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach The Uncommon Reader.
1. Does your group meet regularly? If so, how do you think the queen, as fountain of honor, would appraise your list of reading so far?
2. The queen says that she reads because, "One has a duty to find out what people are like." Yet she begins by reading Nancy Mitford and Ivy Compton-Burnett, hardly a stretch for Her Royal Majesty. How did you begin your reading career? Was it Anne of Green Gables or Barbara Cartland? What treasured books on your group's list closely reflect your own world and background? Do you read to understand others? Is anyone present at this meeting a member of the titled aristocracy?
3. Early in The Uncommon Reader, the queen explains that she has resisted reading because it is a hobby, and therefore an expression of a preference—preferences exclude people and are to be avoided. Why does she fear that reading will exclude people – haven't we been brought together today by reading? Is your reading group very exclusive? Have you ever denied membership to someone who wanted to join?
4. "Herself part of the panoply of the world, why now was she intrigued by books, which, whatever else they might be, were just a reflection of the world or a version of it? Books? She had seen the real thing." Do you believe there is a difference between reading and experiencing? Isn't the act of reading a form of experience, or is that vein of thinking distinctly privileged?
5. At first the queen says that her purpose in reading is not primarily literary: it is for analysis and reflection. Why exactly do you read; is it a lofty endeavor or a fundamentally human one?
6. What do you think of the queen's values as a reader, for example her insistence upon reading a book all the way through to the end, regardless her level of engagement? Surely most of us would put a book down if within fifty pages it proved to be a tedious waste of time. Have you ever attempted to discuss a book you haven't read?
7. Authors, the queen decides, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, left to the imagination like their characters. Have you met any famous writers? What were they like? Was your experience anything like the queen's?
8. The appeal of books, according to the queen, lay in their indifference: there is something undeferring about literature, she says. Books do not care who reads them or whether one read them or not. All readers are equal, herself included. Do you agree? Have you ever felt unequal to a book? Superior to one?
9. When the queen first meets the man in the book mobile, she refers to herself as a pensioner – this is clearly a joke. Talk about how Alan Bennett gives voice to the queen and draws humor from her. How had your feelings for this seemingly inaccessible figure changed by book's end?
10. Why is Norman fond of Cecil Beaton, David Hockney and J.R. Ackerley, what do these three people have in common, besides being British artists and writers?
11. Should our leaders spend more time engaged in the arts, particularly in reading literature (for what it's worth, Bill Clinton said he loved Walter Mosely)? What would be the effect?
12. When the queen begins to ask her subjects what they are reading, she is usually met with a shrug (or the Bible, or Harry Potter). Are people intimidated by reading, or are they just lazy and dim?
13. As the queen reads, she grows less interested in her royal duties, and even her appearance (the "permutations" of her wardrobe) goes into decline. Is she becoming more normal, more common? How has reading endangered her ability to carry out her role as a focus for British identity and unity? Isn't that role just a little too much for anyone to shoulder?
14. The queen finds that one book often lead to another; that doors opened wherever she turned ("the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do"). Has The Uncommon Reader opened doors for you? Has it inspired or emboldened you to try a book you've been putting off. Proust, perhaps?
15. At first the queen does not like Henry James's Portrait of a Lady ("oh, do get on!"), but she finds that reading is like a muscle that needs to be developed, and later she changes her mind about James. Have you ever had a similar experience, upon revisiting a challenging book? Would you consider reading The Uncommon Reader again, in order to glean further nuance from its pages?
A delicious and very funny what-if.... a delightful little book that unfolds into a witty meditation on the subversive pleasures of reading.... Mr. Bennett has written a captivating fairy tale ... a tale that showcases its author's customary élan and keen but humane wit." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Bennett's jokes are so beautifully modulated.... The Uncommon Reader is a piece of audacious lèse majesté which, in an earlier age, would have put its author's head on a spike.... Bennett knows what he is doing." —The Guardian
"A kind of palace fairy tale for grown-ups.... [[Bennett's]] account of the queen's adventures often made me laugh out loud." —Jeremy McCarter, The New York Times
"Briskly original and subversively funny." —Publishers Weekly
"[Bennett's] subtle wit and tonal command show why he is so beloved in his native Britain." —Kirkus Reviews
"Alan Bennett is one of the greatest comic writers alive, and The Uncommon Reader is Bennett at his best—touching, thoughtful, hilarious, and exquisite in its observations." —Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones's Diary
"Hilarious and stunning . . . The conceit offered here by Mr. Bennett, the beloved British author and dramatist, is that a woman of power can find and love the power in books. It is a simple equation and one that yields deep rewards. In what is a surprising and surprisingly touching novella, Mr. Bennett shows us why books matter to the queen, his "uncommon reader" and why they matter so much to the rest of us." —Carol Herman, The Washington Times
"Hilarious and pointed . . . The Uncommon Reader is a political and literary satire. But it's also a lovely lesson in the redemptive and subversive power of reading and how one book can lead to another and another and another. . . . But most of all, The Uncommon Reader is a lot of fun to read." —Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
"One of the most subtly ingratiating prose stylists of our time . . . charming enough and wise enough that you will certainly want to keep it around for rereading—unless you decided to share it with friends." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"Clever and entertaining . . . The Uncommon Reader is a celebration of both reading and its counterpart, independent thinking." —Maud Newton, Los Angeles Times
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