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April 03, 2008

Still Reading

Technically, I’m still reading about 400 novels. Some of these I started in grade school. But most I started in the last ten years, since only recently have I managed to overcome the guilt of stopping a novel midway. Or even just a few pages in. Still, I expect I’m missing out. Some books take a while to get hot, where is my compassion? Amy Hempel once said she thinks every sentence she writes is an opportunity for people to stop reading. Talk about pressure. The assumption here is, of course, that you gotta grab readers by the throat and never let them go. Not for one second. Probably she’s right. But tell that to, I dunno, Henry James. I think The Ambassadors starts out kinda slow. Them’s fightin’ words, I know, but imagine if I’d stopped reading! Currently, I am still going at War and Peace, the Bible, Grant’s memoirs, Watership Down, Infinite Jest, American Gothic, Auto-da-Fe. I keep meaning to go back and finish these books, but I get sidetracked. Or I was getting sidetracked until one of my book shelves collapsed a few months ago. Loudest crash ever. Scared the shit out of my cat. Books everywhere. I built these shelves myself, they’d held up five years, it was only a matter of time. After the crash, I piled all the books on a table and regarded them anew. Because I’m a dork, my books are alphabetized. So I was looking at O through R, and decided I wasn’t going to read anything but the books on this table I’d yet to finish or never even started. Here comes Flann O’Brien. The Third Policeman. Good book. Really good writer. But I couldn’t finish it. I got bored! But finish I must. I thought it would help if I also started George Orwell’s Burmese Days. But then my friend Leigh Newman sent me her novel to read and it was really good, but her last name is Newman. And then there’s a few books on the weather I’ve been reading for my new novel and some coroners’ reports and stuff about North Korea and cult behavior and, well, I sort of forgot about Burmese Days. And then the other night I couldn’t sleep, the Food Network was in the other room, and the only thing within reach was a Bible. The Bible is interesting! I forgot how interesting the Bible is. Only the last name on that one is God. Edna O’Brien. Tim O’Brien. Kenzaburo Oe. Amoz Oz. Flannery O’Connor. Thomas Pynchon. Pasternak. Richard Powers. Plutarch. Samuel Pepys. Proust. Rabelais. Jean Rhys. Philip Roth. Bertrand Russell. These people are getting the shaft! My shelf has been collapsed for three months. I’m never gonna fix it, either. And I’m gonna be reading The Third Policeman for the next ten years.

Another problem, I don’t read enough contemporary fiction. I gather my peers are doing great work, and yet I’m still reading Thomas Hardy. Well, what the hell, I love Thomas Hardy. The consensus on him is that he’s a terrific poet whose novels are overwrought and sentimental, strafed with contrivance and high event. True, true. But I love them. Especially The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is one of the best novels about self-destruction I’ve ever read. Self-destruction, self-hate, penance and struggle. But I digress. Of the books published in 2007/08, I’ve read Then We Came to the End, which I thought was great. I’ve been meaning to read Junot Diaz’s new book. Um, I guess I’ve read a few others, but it can’t be more than five. Wow. That’s awful. I’m told no one reads in this country anymore—did you all see the NEA’s report on reading that came out in 2004? It was devastating—and I guess I’m not doing much to sustain my community, either. Crap. What is the problem? Anxiety of influence? I don’t think so. And anyway, why limit that anxiety to my peers? I’m sentimental and hyperbolic, I could easily start writing like Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy minus the genius of Thomas Hardy, no sweat. Am I too cheap to buy books? Because there’s a least two libraries nearby. Good grief. Little did I know when I started this post that I was going end up hating myself for it.

Posted by Fiona Maazel at 02:39 PM in Guest Bloggers |

Comments

I think you should be able to enjoy Henry James without suffering through "Ambassadors". Skip it, go with the earlier ones!

Posted by: Levi | April 03, 2008 at 06:41 PM

holy fuck. i've got to check out that hardy book.

Posted by: OSB | April 03, 2008 at 08:13 PM

I love Hardy too.

Posted by: Alicia | April 03, 2008 at 08:13 PM

Man, you're not alone. Everyone, however, from Borges to Bacon to my best friend's grandmother, tells me that if you find a book is boring, put it down and move on.

There are classics I'm too embarassed to admit I've never read, and perhaps never will read. But I shouldn't feel guilty because there are classics that I have read, and others I will read, and re-read.

Javier Marias said in an interview with the Paris Review that "Virginia Woolf and James Joyce don't exist for me." Can you imagine? A potential Nobel winner has never read, or has no interest in reading, "To the Lighthouse" or "Ulysses"?

Posted by: Willis Dyer | April 03, 2008 at 10:52 PM

And Tom McCarthy hates Thomas Hardy! There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

I've got a couple books I've been in the middle in for several months now--but I refuse to give up. Fortunately, I let myself read other things in the meantime, which aleviates the guilt (somewhat).

Posted by: amcorrea | April 04, 2008 at 12:46 PM

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