Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

The ABC Method

A: Abstain from all food in the evenings

B: Brown carbohydrates only

C: Crisps and sweets forbidden at all times

It wasn’t any harder than that, Håkan Rink thought. He could see the straight and narrow (or slim) path that lay wide open before him. He would now achieve miracles. Now he would catch Serial Salvador. Now perhaps he would even be able to lose his nickname. He was sick to his back teeth with being called Detective Hockey-Rink.

Is he good, or is he good? Thousands of slimming books can go to hell. Millions of magazine and newspaper articles can go and hide in the corner. The ABC-method, the best slimming method in the world, fits on a postcard, Titus thinks quietly, and closes the lid of the laptop.

He wonders about Eddie X. How far has he got? Can that man really write about anything other than love?

Titus is reminded of an article about positive and negative energy that he read some years ago. A team of scientists had compared the ability of people to solve difficult problems. One group that was studied comprised people who used positive thinking and liked to work with target images. Those people saw the final reward as the best way to provide motivation for success. When you know why you should succeed, then you will succeed. This positive method is often used by athletes. The other group was the pessimists. As soon as they were given a task they became grumpy and started looking for problems. What were the obstacles that would prevent them from succeeding? When was the most likely time the whole thing would get screwed up? In their workplaces they were often called whiners. For the pessimists, it was completely rational to think about failure from the very first. It was a matter of mapping out and evaluating the problems before they started work. The results of the study were very interesting. Both groups succeeded well with their tasks. It transpired that optimists and pessimists were just as good at achieving good results. The important thing was to find the method that best suited one’s character. An optimist gets terrified if you talk about problems instead of faith, hope and love; a pessimist is suspicious of anything not based on facts.

Titus remembers how liberating he thought this study was. There was just as much hope for the coal-black prophets of woe as there was for the warbling optimists. At the same time, it was tiring to think about how well these ridiculous self-help books sold, and how much all the optimist consultants earned. Why was that so? Who had even heard of a multi-millionaire who had got rich by claiming that everything gets screwed up? It must be because the optimists have access to the media, and that the pessimists are discriminated against. At a guess, the pessimists earn a fraction of the salary of the optimists even though they do just as good a job. Equal wages for unequal mouths! That should be the slogan.

Titus is determined to do everything in his power to confirm the study. He is going to be literature’s Cathy Freeman: a feted pessimist at the kernel of optimism. The aboriginal and asthmatic runner from Australia dominated the 400-metre tracks around the turn of the century, and harvested lots of Olympic and World Championship medals. She belonged to the indigenous population that had been declared incapable of running their own country and had been cowed by the white colonial optimists for hundreds of years. Every time she won, she looked a bit uncomfortable because the next time she would probably screw it up. Why celebrate with the public now? At the next competition, all those white teeth would scornfully laugh when she lost. But perhaps, perhaps, she could nevertheless be able to try again. If only she prepared a bit better, trained a bit more intensively, a bit longer, a bit more often.

Preparation and facts make for proficiency. Since I am basically a gloomy pessimist, I must devote myself to facts, Titus thinks. The Best Book in the World shall be written with the best research in the world.

The boy at the woman’s bosom may well be a positive and fine image to quickly counter the craving for poison.

But if the sceptic didn’t get more nourishment, it would all get screwed up.

When the city library opens in the morning, Titus is the first to enter. He has slept well, and almost runs up the long steps.

Behind the counter stands an erect and correct man with a rather strange appearance. He has all the necessary requirements to be strikingly handsome: thick brown back-combed hair, clear-cut features with distinct and forceful cheekbones and young-looking skin, almost a little rose-coloured. He has a relaxed smile but there is a trace of shyness in his eyes. If only he had spent a little more time outside the library, he would have been handsomely furrowed. If only he had eaten something other than salads in the lunchroom, he would have looked forceful. Now he sticks out a bit with his pointed face and his thin wrists, like a prototype of a good-looking man that never left the dream factory. He is almost beautiful.

Titus is familiar with the prototype. He has met him at book fairs and various writers’ gatherings. His name is Christer Hermansson and he divides his life between the books he has written himself and books that others have written. In his role as a librarian, he is also one of Sweden’s most influential innovators and debaters in the subject. Titus doesn’t know much about libraries, but is a great admirer of the warped humour in Christer’s books.

‘Christer! Hi, what are you doing here?’ says Titus, and is genuinely pleased to see him.

‘ Ich bin ein bibliothekar !’ says Hermansson and stands to attention, knocking the soles of his Birkenstock sandals together.

Ich bin ein bibliothekar is also the title of one of his books. This is quite clearly a man who takes the expression ‘live your life like a book’ seriously.

‘Ha, ha,’ Titus laughs. ‘I know, but I thought you worked in Södertälje.’

‘My boss, Eva Larsson, carried out an excellent reorganisation of the entire region. Now I’ve been posted here for a year to replace the legendary librarian Oliver C. Johansson! The C stands for Cromwell. For the time being, Oliver is the acting head of department of cultural services in Strängness. The general impression is that he won’t be there very long. There is talk of malign narcissism. He has evidently used dubious methods to try to buy out the entire library services in the Mälardal region with the help of venture capitalists. According to their slogan, they’re going to offer “wide-ranging experiences for the people”. But, whatever – I am the acting director of the library! Here and now!’

‘I see… congratulations are in order then,’ says Titus, who is slightly surprised by the formal tone and the long explanation.

Outside the library walls, Christer is a totally different person who likes to boast about his tennis skills and his literary successes: ‘The critics loooooove me.’ But at work he is evidently down-to-earth and irreproachable.

‘And how can I help you, Titus? Something about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire?’

‘No thank you,’ says Titus, and curses his parents for calling him Titus. Always these jokes about emperors and the Roman Empire.

‘I’m working on an essay about reading habits and need some help with something special. First I need to get hold of all the copies of The Swedish Bookseller magazine from the last five years. Then I want to borrow all the books that have been on their various bestseller of the month lists for the same period.’

‘Aha! Glad to hear it – you have come to the right place. We love tasks like that. We’ll fix it. If you go and have a cup of coffee, it will be ready in about fifteen minutes. The Dan Brown books might be out on loan. They usually are.’