When is enough enough?

I've always been a bit of a collector. It probably started with bubblegum cards. I can still remember them from primary school. There were World War II cards and the American Civil war and I remember The Man from Uncle and Captain Scarlet, then there was Star Trek, Cadbury's 'Dangerous Animals' and the ones you used to get with Brooke Bond Tea. Oh, and the ones from sweet cigarettes too. I had them all.

And then there was my stamp collection, my coin collection followed by Matchbox cars, rocks, shells, fossils, comics and bullets. And then I discovered music. Oh boy! Books came last for me. I was sixteen. This doesn't mean I never read before then but from the age of sixteen I started to amass books beginning with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and I still own that original copy; it cost me 35p.

I read a lot of Solzhenitsyn at the time. I liked the idea of having a collection although I never did get round to The Gulag Archipelago, the only major work by him I haven't read; it's awfully thick. Asimov was the next author I took a real shine too and I've still got a whean of stuff by him. As I recall I started with I, Robot and moved on from there. He has written a lot of stuff though and there's no way I'd ever be able to collect everything he's written.

It is surprising how little some famous authors have actually published. I could hold everything Larkin wrote in one hand and that probably includes all his jazz reviews, at least the collected reviews. I do own all of Beckett's work, everything that made it into book form in any case. I think there a few scraps out there that were never collected but don't quote me on that.

I'm a Beckett scholar so I'm happy to read works in progress or half-finished stuff because I'm interested in the process as well as the end product. As regards most other authors, I really only want to see a fair selection of what they saw fit to publish. The thing about some of Beckett's works is that they were published under … duress is probably too strong a word but he was put under pressure to put out stuff before he was ready. Indeed he published stuff in his lifetime that he really didn't want to put out there ever. And I've read all of that too. I've read many of his letters. I probably would read his laundry lists if someone saw fit to release them.

I'm reminded of the artist David Hockney who discovered that people were going through his bins and stealing bits of art he had thrown out to sell as 'genuine' Hockney. Of course what they salvaged was genuine - that's not the issue - but he considered it sub-standard. So he started putting dirty great crosses through the drawings and they still went for them, framed them up and flogged them. Finally he started ripping them up.

One might argue that a poor piece of writing by someone like Beckett or a scribble by Hockney would be better than most of us would do on our best day and that probably is true but who should decide when a work is finished? Beckett was extremely self-critical and was never truly happy with anything he'd written. Should we simply pooh-pooh that? Or what about Kafka's request to destroy his writing on his death? It never happened and the world breathed a sigh of relief. Would that have been so bad? You never miss what you never had. So I'm told.

I collect music by Tangerine Dream. I think I've about 60 albums now. It's more than the last time I wrote but I can't be bothered counting again. But there are loads I've not got. Apart from a few of the early albums like Tangram or Stratosfear you could put most of them on and I wouldn't be able to tell you which one we were listening to; they do all get very samey after a while, especially the later stuff. So, why do I keep buying them? What am I hoping to hear? Or am I collecting simply for the sake of it?

It's the same with Mike Oldfield. I've got everything he's ever released post-Tubular Bells. I've even got a bootleg of The Orchestral Hergest Ridge and I've heard that awful hippy- esque album he released before Tubular Bells. Oh, and talking about Tubular Bells, I think I've heard at least five versions of the original score released by him and there's really nothing much to distinguish one from another. I didn't even know that John Cleese did the 2003 narration till I looked it up just now.

The point I'm trying to make here is that I think most authors – and I include myself in this list – only have a fixed amount to say about the world. One only has to look at all the poems I've written about truth to get my point. What more could I possibly have to add? And yet I still find myself mulling over the same old questions. It's one of the benchmarks I use to assess my level of depression. If I'm spending too much time pondering the imponderable then I've usually moved up to a capital D.

There is a challenge, of course, to say that you've read everything by a single author. But to say I've read and understood everything by a certain author, ah well. I cannot make that claim as regards Beckett. I can't even say that about Brautigan and I've just finished the last two novels that I'd been saving plus I've read his daughter's biography. So, am I any closer to understanding him? I don’t think so. I really didn't need to read those last two novels. I knew before I started that they weren't his best work. So why read them? Really, if I'm honest, just to say I have.

I was never in the Boy Scouts or anything like that growing up but I did like the idea of getting merit badges. Now I've got my Beckett and Brautigan badges. I've got my Webern badge and my Pink Floyd badge too. I don't have my Larkin badge though because I've not read all his jazz reviews.

I'm nowhere near as bad as I used to be but it would please me no end if I had a guest and they mentioned an interest in some composer and I could stick a CD on for them. As for authors, forget it, too many of the buggers to hope to make a similar offer. Part of the reason for that is that I have much wider musical tastes than I have literary tastes. If I read a book by an author these days it has to be an extraordinary read for me to seek out another book by them.

That said, I always make sure my daughter has the next Douglas Coupland to add to her collection and she has more Tori Amos that anyone in a right mind would ever want to listen to, so I guess I'm living out my need to collect things vicariously through her. The same goes for Carrie with her Leonard Cohen and Jeanette Winterson. I still like sets, collections. My wall of CDs pleases me no end even if I never listened to another one, just the look of them, like little volumes, row upon row of them.

But the question I really want to ask, because I don’t have an answer, is what is it about us that can't say enough is enough? How many of you when they discover an author that excites them will work their way through their entire canon as if that's a way of showing people how much they rank that particular writer, a kind of award.

I wonder what Beckett would think about me going to such trouble to own copies of his writing as well as DVDs and CDs covering his radio, stage and film work? He'd probably say I'd more money than sense. And he'd probably be right.