Confession

It's time I owned up: I rather like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films that I've seen (all of 1, half of 2, fragments of 3). There, I've said it.

There's a lot of stupid mess in my head about why it's sort of shameful to admit this: all sorts of things around intellectual snobbery, received wisdom from critics, sneering differentiations between 'high' and 'popular' culture, the inability to give myself up to something simple and fun, and the associations between mainstream Hollywood money-making output and the decline of civilised values in the age of neo-liberal dominance and the commodification of everything.

But, leaving that aside, whenever I see a bit of these films, there are a number of things that appeal to me. At one level, I think the leads are attractive and funny, and the supporting cast is great (Tom Hollander and Jonathan Pryce, take a bow). And you could even make a case for Keira Knightley as something of a Bechdel-test icon.

The personalities thing has always been an important part of movies' appeal, and remains so for me. But more important for me is the 'world building' element. What I love about these films is the way that the world and its atmosphere is beautifully crafted through locations, props, sets, lighting and effects: this is a world that I would like to visit, a consistently-realised alternative universe where you know how things are going to look and feel. It's rather like luxuriating in a beautiful dream.

Thinking about this made me realise that I have similar sentiments with regard to literature: the books that I have really loved, and which I keep going back to, are appealing to me primarily because of their world-building, their atmosphere, and their prose. For me, 'plot' is just the thing that all these other elements hang on: even in Dickens, where the plots are as structurally integral as the steel rods in a concrete bridge, what's interesting to me is not the logic of the story progressing towards its conclusion, but rather the imagery that we see on the journey, and the vignettes of atmosphere, emotion and mood, and the playful language that sometimes stops you in your tracks and makes you re-read passage after passage.

I think this is why I often feel a sinking sense of disappointment as the pages held in my right hand dwindle down to nothing and the weight of the book is all in the left hand: the knowledge that the familiar patterns of redemption and conclusion are going to play out (which often feels like a bit of a cheat...), and - more - importantly - the sense that you will shortly have to emerge from this beautifully-rendered world that has entranced you.