Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Books I've Put Down
Here are some books I've started to read but haven't finished:
ALL THE KING'S MEN, by Robert Penn Warren...I started it about five months ago, when I read that a remake of the 1948 movie was on the way. I read about twenty-five pages and gave up.
CLAREL...Herman Melville's book-length poem of his trip to the Holy Land is damned difficult. I've read five novels by Melville, and six or seven of his short stories. I've tried to understand his short poems ("The Maldive Shark" being one of them.) I haven't been able to do so. And I'm a fan! I have CLAREL, of course, which is more than even most serious Melville scholars have. I liked what little of it I read, but I won't say I had any idea of what was happening. I liked the extreme brevity of each stanza. Each stanza seems to consist of three or four lines of about five syllables each.
THE IDIOT, by Fyodor Dostoevsky...I first started reading this when I was in eighth grade. I got to page 48 of the Bantam paperback I got at Oscar's (which was the great book store in Huntington then) and stopped. The fact that the thugs in school kept saying "Readin' about yourself, huh?" when they saw me with the book had nothing to do with me stopping reading it. I tried again in eleventh grade and got to page 48 again. I tried when I was thirty-six and, again, got to page 48. So I got a book-on-tape, but, even though it was Dostoevsky, it wasn't THE IDIOT. It was THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. I didn't want to cheat with THE IDIOT. I listened to THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in the car on my way to and from work. It took three weeks! After listening to it, I realized listening to a book-on-tape is not cheating. The written word is a substitute for the spoken word. Anyway, I still haven't read or heard any part of THE IDIOT starting after the part represented by page 48 of the Bantam edition.
COMING UP FOR AIR, by George Orwell...I read about half of this about five years ago and was quite taken with it. But I just haven't gotten up the will to continue reading it.
ULYSSES, by James Joyce...Every June 16th, the day this novel takes place, I listen to excerpts read live on the air. I feel quite acquainted with it. But I have neither heard nor read it straight through. I read "The Dead," though! Joyce wrote that!
CHANCE, by Joseph Conrad...I read about a third of it. It's the only time in reading Conrad that I've felt the problem wasn't that I was not up to his challenge, but that he was being pointless.
THE BIBLE...I try and try. God knows I'll try again.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, by Thomas Mann...I missed the tension which was so present in other works of his I've completed.
THE UNCONSOLED, by Kazuo Ishiguro...I read about a hundred pages and decided that each extremely lengthy passage was not narrated by a different person but that one schizophrenic character was narrating the whole book. I think Ishiguro didn't think a reader would catch on so early as page one-hundred.
ALL THE KING'S MEN, by Robert Penn Warren...I started it about five months ago, when I read that a remake of the 1948 movie was on the way. I read about twenty-five pages and gave up.
CLAREL...Herman Melville's book-length poem of his trip to the Holy Land is damned difficult. I've read five novels by Melville, and six or seven of his short stories. I've tried to understand his short poems ("The Maldive Shark" being one of them.) I haven't been able to do so. And I'm a fan! I have CLAREL, of course, which is more than even most serious Melville scholars have. I liked what little of it I read, but I won't say I had any idea of what was happening. I liked the extreme brevity of each stanza. Each stanza seems to consist of three or four lines of about five syllables each.
THE IDIOT, by Fyodor Dostoevsky...I first started reading this when I was in eighth grade. I got to page 48 of the Bantam paperback I got at Oscar's (which was the great book store in Huntington then) and stopped. The fact that the thugs in school kept saying "Readin' about yourself, huh?" when they saw me with the book had nothing to do with me stopping reading it. I tried again in eleventh grade and got to page 48 again. I tried when I was thirty-six and, again, got to page 48. So I got a book-on-tape, but, even though it was Dostoevsky, it wasn't THE IDIOT. It was THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. I didn't want to cheat with THE IDIOT. I listened to THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in the car on my way to and from work. It took three weeks! After listening to it, I realized listening to a book-on-tape is not cheating. The written word is a substitute for the spoken word. Anyway, I still haven't read or heard any part of THE IDIOT starting after the part represented by page 48 of the Bantam edition.
COMING UP FOR AIR, by George Orwell...I read about half of this about five years ago and was quite taken with it. But I just haven't gotten up the will to continue reading it.
ULYSSES, by James Joyce...Every June 16th, the day this novel takes place, I listen to excerpts read live on the air. I feel quite acquainted with it. But I have neither heard nor read it straight through. I read "The Dead," though! Joyce wrote that!
CHANCE, by Joseph Conrad...I read about a third of it. It's the only time in reading Conrad that I've felt the problem wasn't that I was not up to his challenge, but that he was being pointless.
THE BIBLE...I try and try. God knows I'll try again.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, by Thomas Mann...I missed the tension which was so present in other works of his I've completed.
THE UNCONSOLED, by Kazuo Ishiguro...I read about a hundred pages and decided that each extremely lengthy passage was not narrated by a different person but that one schizophrenic character was narrating the whole book. I think Ishiguro didn't think a reader would catch on so early as page one-hundred.
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 4:21 AM 
