MY LIFE IN BOOKS: JOHN PATRICK HIGGINS

The author of Teeth tells us about his favourite reads

THE CHILDHOOD BOOK I CAN’T FORGET

I spent most of my childhood in a small, prefabricated library at the bottom of my street. In those days it was always raining, and bigger boys, who wanted to beat me up, would never think to look there. The smell of yellowing wood pulp, the feel of the coarse paper library tickets between my fingers, the tang of the asbestos: it all comes flooding back. I’d read forgotten children’s books like, The Size Spies or Help! I am a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory. But the book that fired my imagination like a scholastic brazier was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy, Douglas Adam’s novel of a dull man in pyjamas ignoring the wonders of the Universe, in hopeless pursuit of a cup of tea. It was the first book I bought with my own money. It was the first book I didn’t have to give back.

MY FAVOURITE CLASSIC READ

The stories of M. R. James are a touchstone for generations of beneath-the-bedsheets readers, especially Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, where the bedlinen itself becomes a sort of creeping horror. James pushes buttons even today. His tales of plodding academic duffers being punished out of all proportion to their minor transgressions, has an entirely modern cruelty. They are bracingly unsentimental tales.

THE BOOK I RECOMMEND TO OTHERS

The book I’ve bought most for other people is George Saunder’s Civilwarland in Bad Decline, but I think the books I’ve been recommending most recently are Gerald Kersh’s murky, ribald Soho-noir, Fowler’s End, and Wendy Erskine’s Sweet Home. I’m a notoriously late adopter and Sweet Home is a very recent book for me. It’s also blithe and funny and sad, all the things I like. I’ll get round to her new book, Dance Move, probably before the decade is out.

FAVOURITE AUTHOR

I’m going to cheat and have two. P G Wodehouse remains the funniest, sunniest writer of all time. His pen gavottes across the page. His plots are the same nonsense again and again: bits with cats and policeman’s helmets, but his writing is always sublime. He’s indomitable. Robert Aickman is the self-professed author of “strange stories”, and he never fails to deliver on that promise. His writing is cold, enigmatic and elusive. His story Wood is one of the oddest I’ve read and repays endless re-reading. I’m not sure I’ve ever got to the bottom of it or will.

THE BOOK THAT’S MADE THE MOST IMPACT

Mr Palomar by Italo Calvino is a series of short stories about a man flustered by life. But these daily vicissitudes expand to take on cosmic significance. If Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, Palomar sees the universe in a gecko’s belly or two pounds of goose fat. I’d also like to mention Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Spark is a poet, and a deliciously cruel and funny one.

MY COMFORT READ

I read those beautifully packaged BFI film books. You get an essay by a famous writer on a famous film: Camille Paglia on The Birds, or Salmon Rushdie on The Wizard of Oz. I’m currently reading Simon Callow’s The Night of the Hunter, one of my favourite films, and it’s a gorgeous meditation on a beautiful film. See the film, then read the book. Or the other way round.

THE BOOK FROM WHICH I TAKE INSPIRATION

J K Huysman’s, With the Flow sees wretched Parisian clerk, Jean Folantin, searching for a half-decent meal in Belle Epoque Paris. He fails, miserably. Each time he happens on some chance at happiness, he worries at it until it falls apart in his hands. The seed of his anguish is within him. He can never escape it. I can relate. When I’m waiting for a bus, or in a restaurant or attempting a holiday, I think “What would Jean Folantin do?” And I do the opposite. Teeth by John Patrick Higgins (Sagging Meniscus Press) is available now