What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Dedication:

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel

Letter:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON  K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Harper,

What is there not to like about Agatha Christie? Her books are a guilty pleasure; who would have thought that murder could be so delightful? I’ve selected The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for you. Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, has rather incongruously chosen to retire to the village of King’s Abbot to grow vegetable marrows. But his gardening plans are upset by a shocking murder. Who could have done it? The circumstances are so peculiar….

One of the great qualities of Agatha Christie (funny how she’s never referred to simply as “Christie”) is that ambition and talent were perfectly matched. In over eighty novels, she delivered exactly what she promised. To do that in literature requires, I think, not only talent and a sound knowledge of one’s form but also a good degree of self-knowledge. The result, besides a trail of bodies, is an artistic integrity that has endeared her to generations of readers.

On page 38 I have highlighted a line on George Eliot that I liked.

You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save on money, but to make a point, which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn’t lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls off the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written.

And there’s another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new: I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature.

I was in Ottawa recently and while I was there I happened to visit Laurier House, where two of your most illustrious predecessors lived and worked: Wilfrid Laurier and William Lyon Mackenzie King. It’s an impressive mansion, with dark panelling, rich carpets, imposing furniture and a hidden elevator. What a perfect setting for an Agatha Christie murder mystery, I thought, which accounts for the book now in your hands.

Did you know that both Laurier and King were voracious readers? I include photographs I took of King’s library, which was also where he worked, getting Canada through the Depression and the Second World War and building the foundations of our enviable social welfare system. Remarkable the range and number of books he read, including one that I love, one of the greatest books ever written, Dante’s The Divine Comedy. There was the complete Kipling, too, and all of Shakespeare. A two-volume biography of Louis Pasteur. Books on art. Shelf after shelf of the most varied histories and biographies. There were even what looked like self-help books to do with body and health. Truly a striking library. And let’s not forget the piano.

Laurier, who made a country out of an independent colony, was an even more dedicated reader. His library was so extensive that King had it shipped out when he moved in, needing space for his own collection. Laurier’s books are now stored at the National Archives.

How did they manage to read so much? Perhaps Laurier and King were excellent at time management. Certainly television wasn’t there to inform them in part and otherwise fruitlessly devour their hours. Or was it that reading was a natural and essential element of being a respectable, well-rounded gentleman? Was it some ingrained habit of the privileged that gave these two prime ministers permission to spend so much time reading?

Reading was perhaps a privileged activity then. But not now. In a wealthy, egalitarian country like ours, where the literacy rate is high (although some people still struggle and need our help) and public libraries are just that, public, reading is no longer an elitist pastime. A good book today has no class, so to speak, and it can be had by anyone. One of the marvels of where I live, the beautiful province of Saskatchewan, is that the smallest town—Hazlet, for example, population 126—has a public library. Nor need books be expensive, if you want to own one. You can get a gold mine of a used book for fifty cents. After that, all that is needed to appreciate the investment is a little pocket of time.

I bet you King hurried to bed muttering to himself, “It was Parker the butler, I’m sure of it!”

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

encl: one inscribed paperback book and four inscribed photographs

 

 

The Divine Comedy—what a work. As soaring and rich in detail as a Gothic cathedral, and not a hard read, either. Just a fantastic road trip through hell, purgatory and heaven, with a cast of characters more colourful than a ship of pirates. I recommend the translation by the American poet John Ciardi.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

More good stuff!

 

The Shakespeare is top left, above the Kipling. But I’d guess that King was no Glenn Gould at the piano.

 

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