Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

reading/not-reading

There was an interesting article by Laura Miller in the NYT Book Review section this past Sunday concerning the question how long you stick with a book before giving up and deciding that you can't - or won't - finish it.

Naturally, the more you "have" to read professionally, the less slack you cut writers. One person was quoted as saying he can pretty much tell by the end of the first sentence whether it's worth it to him to continue.

When I was younger it was a point of pride to finish every book. Not doing so felt as though I hadn't finished my homework, or had left the milk out on the counter, or the back door ajar, or something. Things left unfinished, in other words, nag at the mind.

Now that I've sort of left all that Lutheran clean-plate-club-ness behind, and have become a self-indulgent slacker, I sometimes do not finish books that annoy me. Reading Miller's article reminded me of a few of them:

1. A novel (perhaps American Psycho?) by Bret Easton Ellis that I brought on vacation to Florida one winter and left in the hotel-room drawer (although I should have burned it in the parking lot) because it was so disgusting and violent that it made me ashamed to be a fellow human being. It was better to read nothing than to read that dreck - and since I am ALWAYS reading something, that's a strong statement indeed.

2. Same vacation. A Man In Full, Tom Wolfe. Would it never end? I was up nights with a cold and would have paid a lot of money (THOSE were the glory days!) for anything, but anything else.

3. Having moved to MN and having lots of free time: Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence. I think I was vicariously trying to participate in the seminar in Lawrence and Woolf that I couldn't take because I moved away from the MA English program that I was in. That was the same period in which I read all four volumes of V Woolf's diaries. And LOVED them.
I don't "get" Lawrence. The scene is dreary; the characters depressing. Lawrence constantly tells instead of showing: "So-and-so felt that..." Anyway, I read perhaps 2/3 of it, and then it sat on my bedside table for months while I read other stuff, and then finally I gave in to the inevitable and moved it back into the bookcase.

There's something to be said for life stages though. My eighth grade English teacher, doubtless reliving his own glory days of college, pressed me to read, insisted that I read, Jane Austen. I did - but I didn't really appreciate it despite our delightful tete-a-tetes about the novels. Then I read Mansfield Park last spring and I thought it was unbelievable. Why hadn't I gotten it before? It's to be hoped that I'll have a Lawrence breakthrough at some point.

What to read now? I'm dazzled by the possibilities. Perhaps James's Wings of the Dove? But that's for possible writing purposes. O Pioneers? - same thing. Hmm. More thinking required - I'll do it silently and off line and spare you.

Posted by otto0114 at May 14, 2004 07:58 PM