SO IT WAS THAT I FOUND MYSELF, the other week, with a couple of hours to kill, so I took myself — you might not be surprised to hear — to a bookshop. Which? Doesn’t matter. A big one, and I sat myself down in a comfortable chair upstairs with a copy of Moby-Dick, as I was in a mood for wild, sea-girt language and obsession:
“So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s . . . seasons don’t fear the Reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the . . .”
What, what? No, not the Melville that I was after, but Blue Öyster Cult or something, something playing at pretty fair volume in the shop so that it became hard to stay off the coast of Nantucket, where I wanted to be. Of course, I’m almost English now, so I didn’t complain. I’m complaining now, although perhaps you’ll think I’m prim for doing so. We are told that music helps us to shop and I’m sure that I have sashayed into Topshop in my time and gained that extra zap of discretionary-spending vim from the right soundtrack played at the right volume. But in a bookshop? I’m not so sure.
Vivaldi, I could have managed. Mozart; even Satie; most things, as long as whatever it was didn’t have words, because when I’m browsing for words, I would rather that the only place I found them was on the page.
What do you think? maybe I’m in a minority. My husband can read when there’s music-with-words on; he can even write. I can’t do either. I’m necessarily not after library silence when I’m tome-shopping — I understand that plenty of folks might find that troubling (would you be embarrassed if your phone went off? If you sneezed? Would you feel that someone would look down scornfully over half-moon spectacles at you?). But that afternoon I wanted the whiteness of the whale in my head, not the White Stripes, and I was a little peeved. As ever, I wonder what you think.
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Is there an ideal soundtrack for searching the shelves? Should it be varied — The 1812 Overture for History; Guillemots over by Birds and Birdwatching? Tell me, and I’ll pass on the information to the store in question.