One can presume that Samuel Johnson, as an author and the compiler of a dictionary, no less, understood the meaning of words and things; and when he said that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” he knew what he was talking about.

As someone interested in books and their propagation, Johnson was also involved in literary debates, participated in book clubs, and even founded one. Although his views on book clubs are not documented, he was in favour of reading books towards which one felt immediately inclined, and giving up books if they afforded no pleasure.

The desire to share and enjoy a good story is the most natural thing in the world, and a book club may just be the expression of that collective impulse. But as a congregation of humans, the book club can also offer an interesting study in character types. And one would imagine that for a book club to be successful — how we may define a book club’s success is for now a dangling question — its members should represent a good balance of character types and opposing forces. So what are the colourful characters attracted to a book club?

Reading books is nowadays considered a tough business. I think it has something to do with the academia’s need to process graduates at industrial scale, and the resultant proliferation of reading support systems in the form of reading guides and book summaries etc. This modern phenomenon could lead one to believe that reading is too difficult a task to be undertaken in an unsupervised or solitary capacity. And thus we have the Perplexed Reader, who is too fearful to choose a book to read.

The Perplexed Reader has not been socialised with books as a child and, therefore, is full of anxiety when approaching a book, lest it should turn out to be the wrong kind of book: one which others may not approve, for any number of reasons. Such a reader is also dependent on the endorsement of others before expressing an opinion about a book because, just as a book cannot be approached independently, an opinion cannot be expressed without sanction.

But the future’s not all bleak for the Perplexed Reader and, with the reading habit forming over time and the alienation ending, he could find the courage to approach books on his own, and read and form his own independent opinion about them.

Naturally, a house full of perplexed readers will be rudderless, so, as a counterpoint to the Perplexed Reader, there’s Boss. She certainly knows what to read and, moreover, knows exactly what her opinion would be about a book, oftentimes before she has read the book in question. The reason is very simple, and has nothing to do with literature or literary acumen.

Boss is bossy because she knows everything, and could tell you about it in great detail. There’s no mystery under the heavens that could confound her. Furthermore, she has a fixed idea about human relationships, and all their shades are one to her. While literature never had a chance with Boss, publications do benefit from her existence, because there are certain kinds of books, mostly self-help books or self-help books disguised as novels, that conform with her worldview.

Whenever she comes upon such books, she is only too happy to champion them and bring them to members of her book club. And if in the process she finds more people to convert to her authority and her worldview, nobody should grudge her her fair reward.

Ideally, all those recruited by Boss should be examples of subdued and disciplined humanity but, alas, that is often not the case. There is the Procrastinator who does not carry out the given tasks, or submits them late, and becomes silent when confronted. Nine times out of 10, a day before the book club is to meet, the Procrastinator would read the beginning, the middle and the end of the book, and slip into the crowd of dutiful readers. With a knowing nod and wink, a comment here and an observation there, he becomes fully assimilated into the discussion. He continues to live dangerously thus, not unburdened by guilt, but too deep-dyed in his habits to change.

The Procrastinator may think that he has fooled everyone, but one person he has not fooled is the Warden. The Warden secretly scrutinises everyone when they first join the group, and they must win her approval after a suitable probationary period, in which they must remain on the straight and narrow. The Warden not only dutifully reads all the books with great alertness, she also knows the whole truth about the Procrastinator.

However, she chooses not to reveal it publicly, preferring instead to sidle up to the Procrastinator at moments of her choosing and, in a friendly voice, grill him about those aspects of the book which the Procrastinator could not possibly know without immersing himself in the book. The feelings of power and superiority over the Procrastinator, which the Warden enjoys in these moments, is what she lives for and would not exchange for anything.

The Racer is the opposite of the Procrastinator. For the Racer, getting a task done is more important than enjoying the process. And whether it is a book or a relationship, the Racer goes about it with single-mindedness and gusto. And because so much energy has been put into finishing the job, the Racer must tell everyone about it, preferably in a loud voice, and this is one reason both Boss and Warden hate her, although they both inhabit the Racer’s moral universe.

There are participatory and exclusionary universes and the Noble chooses the latter kind, of course. The Noble has a view of literature as the exclusive domain of souls like himself and, like him, nothing about literature is easy, comforting or approachable.

Given the choice, the Noble would ideally not mix with the writer, and discuss her instead with a fellow Noble, applauding or cutting down the writer’s existence, depending upon whether or not they have found the writer, not the work, sufficiently complex, confounding and cold.

[To be continued]

The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.
He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 7th, 2025