Delight by J.B. Priestly

J.B. Priestly delighting in his

typewriter and pipe

It just has to be said - Delight by J.B. Priestly is a delight!

I got my hands on this book, published in 1949, through an inter-library loan. Hooray for my public library. It actually came from the shelf of the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library so it didn't have far to travel. Maybe two miles...

Anyway, Priestly, a self-professed grumbler, wrote this book with the intent of helping raise the morale of the British people after the end of World War II by giving them reasons to rejoice of life's simple pleasures. It contains 114 short essays on such delights as fountains, smoking, a gin and tonic, old photographs, charades, a walk in the pine wood. Easy enough to be delighted by any of those (except maybe the smoking!)

But digging deeper, Mr. Priestly comes up with such pleasures as: not going, suddenly doing nothing, discovering Vermeer, a first time abroad, found money, orchestras tuning up, and departing guests.

The longest essay here runs to maybe three pages; most fit on one page or two. All are written in the richest of language and with more than a twinkling of humor. If you can get your hands on a copy of this Delight, I don't think you will be disappointed.

And it may get you to thinking about some of your own delights. It certainly did me.

You will see what I mean. Here is Number Fifty-one:

There is a peculiar delight, which I can still experience though I knew it best as a boy, in cosily reading about foul weather when equally foul weather is beating hard against the windows, when one is securely poised between the wind and rain and sleet outside and the wind and rain and sleet that leap from the page into the mind. The old romancers must have been aware of this odd little bonus of pleasure for the reader, and probably that is why so many of their narratives, to give them a friendly start, began with solitary horsemen, cloaked to the eyebrows, riding through the night on urgent business for the Duke, sustained by nothing more than an occasional and dubious ragout or pasty and a gulp or two of sour wine (always fetched by surly innkeepers or their scowling slatterns), on side-roads deep in mire, with wind, rain, thunder-and-lightning, sleet, hail, snow, all turned on at the full. With the windows rattling away and hailstones drumming at the paper in the fireplace, snug in bed except for one cold elbow, I have travelled thousands and thousands of mucky miles with these fellows, braving the foulest nights, together crying "Bah!"

Delighting in J.B. Priestley

I came across this title in my morning reading and was reminded that long ago I tried to find this little book but to no avail. The book in question is Delight by J.B. Priestley. It was published originally in 1949 and contains 114 short essays in praise of simple pleasures. Things were pretty dismal in England at the time; its people were still suffering from the effects of the war and these thoughts offered a bit of cheer.

I am a sucker for this type of book! A 60th anniversary edition was published five years ago which may have been when I searched for it before.

Now I am on a quest once again. I have submitted an inter-library loan request and have contacted Powell's Books concerning a copy it has listed as available (I want to make sure it is not a former library book).

I await a response. 

Here is a bit of the review of Delight written by Lisa O'Kelly for The Observer in 2009:

There is much here to raise a smile, not least Priestley's wonderfully lucid prose, which is a delight in itself. The little things in which he takes pleasure are varied and often hugely affecting: dancing; fountains; a walk in a pine wood; a new box of matches; the sound of a football or an orchestra tuning up; long trousers; playing a cracking game of tennis; smoking in a hot bath; being silly with children; waking to the smell of bacon and coffee; getting a great idea.

Mr. Priestly was a novelist and playwright. In the 1940s, he wrote the play An Inspector Calls which was performed by a touring company here sometime in the 1990s. The company put a call out for some local folks to be a part of a crowd scene. I auditioned but apparently didn't have the look they wanted. Oh, well. My one chance at Broadway.

My failed theater career aside, after a gloomy and dreary January, this book sounds to be the perfect pick-me-up.