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Reading is hardamental
By briantologist | July 22, 2003
I’m officially giving up on Edwin Mullhouse, the book I’ve been trying to read since I went to the Big Easy in May. Technically I’ve been trying to read it since about 1997, when I first picked it up from the bookstore where I worked at the time. It seemed like fun: The life, death, and legacy of an American author who publishes his literary masterwork at ten and dies at eleven. And the prose is magnificently crafted; Steven Millhauser, the author, has an incredible ability to craft gorgeous sentences.
But Jesus, I’m a hundred pages into the damn thing and we’re still working on basics here. I think I’d be rewarded for my patience and persistence, but with my drinking schedule being what it is this summer, I’m a little short on both those virtues. I’ve started this book like six times, but previously I’d never gotten past page 9 or so, so dense is the prose, so short is my attention span. (B.A., English Literature, University of Tulsa, 1999. President’s honor roll, Spring 1999. Have never finished The Sound and the Fury, which I’ve been assigned a grand total of five times for various lit classes beginning in high school.)
So do you give up on the book if it’s just not doing anything for you? Though the literary idealist in my stands up and slams his white, delicate hands down on the dark teak table and says something like “A thousand times no!”, the budding pragmatist in me (he’s a late bloomer), along with everybody I’ve ever met who reads a lot, responds with a hearty “hell yeah.”
Okay, I’m giving this book until page 150 and then that’s it. Providing I can put down In Cold Blood, which I’m already 40 pages into and which is already way better. Why do I do these things to myself? Mark my words: When you turn off the TV for an evening, you’re only faced with difficult decisions like this! It’s nothing but trouble. Stay sedated. Trust me.
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