There's something stiff and self-conscious about peoples' claims that a piece of "literary" fiction made them laugh out loud. I never believe them; at best I suspect that they forced a laugh after a couple of re-readings revealed the passage was supposed to be funny. There is no real foundation for my skepticism, of course. Some people must genuinely find The Mill on the Floss hilarious. It's just that there's such an air about it . . . sophisticated, intellectual people are set apart by the fact that they can dig a belly laugh out of Ulysses, y'see.

It could just be jealousy, because I'm a literary philistine with a taste for trash (I still re-read my Anne of Green Gables books of a frosty winter afternoon). I'm a lazy reader, and it's hard to spur myself to do the coolie labour of reading big, hard works when the easy delights of PG Wodehouse and Dick Francis are beckoning from my bookshelf. Naturally I want everyone to be as lazy as I am, which means that if they say they really enjoy Gaddis--the way I enjoy Agatha Christie--they must be lying hypocrites.

But even if that is true (and I suspect it is), I must plead extenuating circumstances: the whiff of sanctimony that hovers around so many discussions of "important" books. Is it just me, or are there a lot of people who discuss books the way Victorian ladies used to discuss church: as a painful duty that ought to be enjoyed, but never is.

Of course, there are lots of ways to enjoy books, and I suppose that the way I enjoy them, getting swept up in a tsunami wave of language and story, is only one. But try as I might, I cannot but feel in my heart of hearts that it is the only one that really matters.

Anyway, the reason I write about this is that a couple of weeks ago I found myself telling someone I like, and haven't seen in a while, that I am "doing" Orwell's collected four-volume writings. Immediately I thought--and said--how awful that sounded. And then today, while waiting for a meeting to start, I dipped my nose into my Dorothy Parker's complete stories, and laughed aloud.

"What are you reading?" said one of the IT people.

"Dorothy Parker", I answered, and held up the book for her to see.

"Is she good?" she asked. "I've never read her."

I read her the passage that had made me laugh.

Sighing, Mrs. Weldon turned her attention to a bowl of daffodils, slightly past their first freshness. There was nothbing to be done there; the omniscient Delia had refreshed them with clear water, had clipped their stems, and removed their more passe sisters. Still Mrs. Weldon bent over them pulling them gently about.

She liked to think of herself as one for whom flowers would thrive, who must always have blossoms about her, if she would be truly happy. When her living-room flowers died, she almost never forgot to stop in at the florist's, the next day, and get a fresh bunch. She told people, in little bursts of confidence, that she loved flowers. There was something almost apologetic in her way of uttering her tender avowal, as if she would beg her listeners not to consider her too bizarre in her taste. It seemd rather as though she expected the hearer to fall back, startled, at her words, crying, "Not really! Well, what are we coming to?"

She looked as if she would like to laugh, if only she could see something . . . anything . . . in it to laugh about. She settled for a half-hearted smile.