Art Garfunkel has put a list of every book he has read since 1968 on his website. Detailed in chronological order, his 1,023 books (that's two a month) begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Confessions, in June 1968, and end, for the moment, with Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, on which Orson Welles based his magnificent film.
The list shows Garfunkel's eclectic and intellectual taste, from Plato's The Last Days of Socrates to PD Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous, from James Simon Kunen's The Strawberry Statement to Richard Selzer's Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery. Mind you, there are some by more obvious writers, too, such as John Steinbeck and Philip Roth, and a couple of nods to British authors, with the inclusion of Nick Hornby (How to Be Good) and Ian McEwan, whose On Chesil Beach Garfunkel read last summer. He also read his own book of prose poems, Still Water, in October 1989.
My favourite listing, though, is Green Homosexuality by a certain KJ Dover. I somehow think that Garfunkel meant Professor Kenneth Dover's seminal work Greek Homosexuality, unless the great classicist, unbeknown to me, has also published a book on gay sex and the environment.
- Back in October 1973, Garfunkel read Pride and Prejudice. If he had only waited until this month, he could have sped through the cut-down version, just 53 pages long. The publisher, Real Reads, is launching its children's versions of P&P and Sense and Sensibility (at about the same length) next week. Retold in simple language by a teacher, Gill Tavner, with nice new modern-style illustrations, they beg the question as to whether Jane Austen has been given a Janet and John makeover.
The publisher simply argues that the books will appeal to 7- to 12-year-olds, who are not quite ready for the real thing. It also rejects any talk of dumbing-down. At least, from my quick glance, the novels have not been given the Andrew Davies sexed-up treatment.
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- An "Angel of the South" sculpture is to be erected beside Ebbsfleet International (a grandiose word for a God-awful area) station in Kent. The shortlist of five includes the Turner-winners Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread. At 165ft, it will be as tall as Nelson's Column.
Wallinger, chatting to me at the lunch for the South Bank Show awards (on television tonight), says that the local council has already had letters from residents saying they do not want some giant phallus-like object erected. I'm more worried, however, that the boss of London & Continental Railways is on the selection panel.
He and his company chose the dire The Meeting Place, the kitsch sculpture of a couple embracing at St Pancras station.
- While going around the wonderful From Russia exhibition at the Royal Academy (Sir Norm Rosenthal's last hurrah, by the way, as chief curator), I overheard two of the guards speaking to each other in Russian. The Academy assures me that they are from its regular team of security staff, and have not been specially hired by the Ruskies to make sure none of the paintings are nicked.