I've had a realization about myself as a reader. A few months ago, my friend Malady invited me to join the small book club she and our mutual friend Greg had created some years ago. I'm pretty sure Greg drives what the group is going to read because the books are usually very long and very hard. Indeed, Greg has referred to himself as a "masochist reader."
This year's book was Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon. It is a dense, whopper of a tome weighing in at over 1,000 pages. I was enthusiastic at first, but after slogging through 220 pages, I began to drift and decided to abandon the project.
I told Erin about my experience and, in her usual objective way, she told me, "I wondered why you had agreed to read that book. You always get restless after about five pages, so how did you think you would get through that thing?" I responded like any self-respecting guy would—I got defensive and rebuffed the comment.
But, alas, Erin was right. I thought about my experience with Pynchon and how I approach books in general. It occurred to me that I don't actually read books. Instead, I "visit" books. I have not read a 100+ page book from cover to cover in years - even fiction that I really like. I skip around, catching images here, picking up ideas there.
Dozens of books pass through my hands during the course of a month. For many, I do no more than look at the dust jacket and table of contents. For the rest, it's likely that I'll read only 20% of the actual text. My method of reading never bothered me before—I always seem to remember something significant about all the books I've visited, no matter how transient my experience with them had been. Besides, Abe Lincoln read like this and Annie Dillard practices it today. Both of them seemed to have turned out OK.
But I was troubled by my book club experience. An obvious problem was that I had to tell Greg and Malady that I was throwing in the towel. What would they think? But more importantly, I realized that I had lost some ability or desire to read works that required sustained effort and concentration.
This year's book was Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon. It is a dense, whopper of a tome weighing in at over 1,000 pages. I was enthusiastic at first, but after slogging through 220 pages, I began to drift and decided to abandon the project.
I told Erin about my experience and, in her usual objective way, she told me, "I wondered why you had agreed to read that book. You always get restless after about five pages, so how did you think you would get through that thing?" I responded like any self-respecting guy would—I got defensive and rebuffed the comment.
But, alas, Erin was right. I thought about my experience with Pynchon and how I approach books in general. It occurred to me that I don't actually read books. Instead, I "visit" books. I have not read a 100+ page book from cover to cover in years - even fiction that I really like. I skip around, catching images here, picking up ideas there.
Dozens of books pass through my hands during the course of a month. For many, I do no more than look at the dust jacket and table of contents. For the rest, it's likely that I'll read only 20% of the actual text. My method of reading never bothered me before—I always seem to remember something significant about all the books I've visited, no matter how transient my experience with them had been. Besides, Abe Lincoln read like this and Annie Dillard practices it today. Both of them seemed to have turned out OK.
But I was troubled by my book club experience. An obvious problem was that I had to tell Greg and Malady that I was throwing in the towel. What would they think? But more importantly, I realized that I had lost some ability or desire to read works that required sustained effort and concentration.
As any self-respecting guy would do, I blamed something other than myself for this apparent deficiency in my mental powers. I blamed the Internet. I'm a news feed and blog junkie. If feeds don't have a title that immediately grab me, I pass them by. If blog posts are longer than four short paragraphs, I get impatient.
But I've always cared about good content. I've recently spent quality time with Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, Winston Churchill's Painting as a Pastime, and the Book of Ecclesiastes from the original 1611 text of the King James Bible. And yes, I know each of them are less than 100 pages.
So, I'm going to start training for the big books again. I've put Against the Day back on hold at the library and will rejoin Malady where I left off (Greg has long since finished the book and moved on to some new and exciting torture). If nothing else, Pynchon will certainly be a good training ground for Dante and Proust. I just have to remember to use proper lifting technique when I go to pick up the book tonight.
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4 comments:
Way to go, Little Buddy! Just think how cool we are going to be when we tell people we actually finished AGAINST THE DAY?!!!!
I have decided to name our book group, the Chums of Chance.
Like it?
The day we finish Pynchon will be a glorious day.
I like it - "Chums of Chance" it is!
I see nothing wrong in reading short books. There is much to be said for being succint. Long books give too many pages for authors to wax profound. Frequently they have only one really meaningful thing to say and say it over and over. You'll have to let me know if the whopper is worth the time or if the author could have been more concise.
I agree with you, Lost. Some authors have some bloated ideas about themselves and their work.
This book is interesting, however, so I'm going to hang with it. I'll let you know how it goes.
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