Country Squire

ROB INGRAM WARNS US THE DEMISE OF THE COUNTRY BOOK CLUB IS NIGH.

I HATE TO BE THE HARBINGER of bad news. Even more than I hate using words like harbinger. What the hell is a harbinger? I’ve never met anyone who introduced themselves as a harbinger. I’ve never seen anyone wearing a HARBINGER T-shirt. What would happen if you told Centrelink you were an unemployed harbinger? But back to the bad news. The book club is dead. Not the ABC TV program The Book Club, which is certainly dead and buried. I mean the book-club concept. The small-town book club that across Australia cuddled together regional readers. Maybe it was an inevitable consequence of the ABC’S management error. Maybe those little gaggles of women with time on their hands dreamt of one day having an educated fop like Jason Steger in their sitting rooms. Maybe they dreamt of one day having Jennifer Byrne’s surfeit of personality or Marieke Hardy’s practised perversity. But, whatever. The very people who for years have said they couldn’t put the book down, have put their books down. In truth, the book was never important to the book club. It was purely about a fellowship need. Despite the intellectual pretence, the book club was really a Tupperware party for people who didn’t need any more Tupperware. It was a one-size-fits-all activewear party for people who knew — deep down — that they weren’t active. It was a Delores De Lago glitz-and-glam jewellery party for people who spend all day in track pants and T-shirts. Sales reps trying to perpetuate the old party-plan merchandising concept will tell you how successful it is. Sadly they think it’s about their product when it’s really about the need for social networking. Books can’t destroy social networks. Not even Tupperware can destroy social networks. But competitiveness and jealousy wipe out social networks like a nuclear strike on an ant nest. And the book club is the first step onto the escalator of upward social comparison. The first book club get-together is around the kitchen table with instant coffees and a jam roll from the supermarket. Then, the following week hostess two puts out espresso coffee and focaccia. Hostess three presents iced-coffee frappés and chocolate-cream savarins. Hostess four whips up espresso martini affogatos with candied hazelnut tarts. Hostess five offers French grenache rosé with watermelon and strawberry salad and crushed lime ice. Hostess six cancels at the last minute and drinks all the frozen margaritas herself. The book club lesson is that we have a natural tendency to compare ourselves with others to make judgments about ourselves. Worse, we compare ourselves with the way others pretend to be when, before the competitiveness kicks in, they are just the same as us. The Chosen One, who reads alone at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a Ryvita, passes on a couple of observations from her own research. The book clubs that lasted the longest were the ones that saw the dangers and adopted the book-and-pizza format. The quickest way to wind up a book club is to ask: “Who selected this book anyway?”

“THE BOOK CLUB WAS REALLY A TUPPERWARE PARTY FOR PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T NEED ANY MORE TUPPERWARE.”