3 August 2009
I dropped a book off at the library the other day, and a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. This particular book was a stone around my neck. I’m going to finish you, I’m going to finish you, I chanted for weeks, then months. Finally, more than 2/3 through, I gave up.
I’m usually pretty liberal about quitting books (in the early pages) that I’m finding slow-going or otherwise unengaging; there’s just too much to read, and I’m a slow reader. It often takes me a few false-starts before I happen upon the “right” book, the one that I need to be reading. So quitting a book, in other words, is nothing personal; it’s not you, it’s me, I want to say to the book. Really, it is.
Usually, it’s about timing. I may not finish the book right now, but I will eventually. If I got to the book in the first place, there was a good reason; so I almost always come back to it. But I probably won’t be coming back to this one.
I’m not sure why I stuck it out in the first place. Maybe because it was written by an author who’d been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Maybe because the book seemed smart to me, the writing sharp and lucid.
This is all a little neurotic, I know. Like a dysfunctional romance.
In the end, I’m attributing the premature termination of my relationship with this book to something I wasn’t quite aware of prior to this experience; which is my distaste for novels that are essentially cynical. This novel is what I’d call “bittersmart”– about ugly affluent people with ugly affluent problems. It’s not that I feel in any way superior to or judgmental of these characters or their stories; it’s that, I suppose, on some basic level, I read for hope, not commiseration. These days, anyway.
Might the novel have ended on a hopeful, vaguely redemptive note? I may never find out. I suppose I could do some research, find a review. I don’t know, though. Part of me wants my experience with this book to stand on its own. An empirical reality, barred from external influences.
Bolano’s 2666 has so far swept me away. What a difference. This is definitely a book that I need to be reading.
