I read a lot of fiction--and am currently making my way through a novel by a very good writer. I confess, though, that I'm rather disappointed by the book.
Yet I plan to continue with it. I want to see where the book goes, want to know if my view of the novel will have changed, by the end of it.
I think about a particular insight from college, many years ago (the 1970s).
In a literature course, I was reading Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I remember that I was bored by the book.
Then, fairly suddenly--it might have been one hundred pages into the novel, perhaps one hundred and fifty pages--I was taken aback. The book had (for whatever reason, or reasons) come together for me; I felt (it was a somewhat out-of-the-blue sensation) that I was in fact not reading something boring, but remarkable.
This was a long time ago--I was a very young man when I read the novel--and I have no idea what I'd feel about the book today. (One's responses to works of literature can, of course, be altered, dramatically, with time. A book one felt to be astonishing at age twenty can feel, decades later, dreary. A book believed to be dreary in one's youth can, many years after the fact, appear beautiful, revelatory. Or, a work regarded as brilliant can, decades hence, still feel brilliant--though one may, perhaps, now apprehend its power and beauty in different ways. In none of these instances has the text of the book changed. But--I am indeed not alone in making this observation--one's life has no doubt changed, in varied and often meaningful ways...and so too, in many instances, will one's responses change to the nature, meaning, and feeling of a particular work.)
Today, I attempt to be as patient as possible with the books I read (particularly if I have faith in the writer, from previous encounters with the writer's work). Sometimes, I do give up; pressing on, with certain books, feels like too much of a burden, a waste of time.
Yet I do think, periodically, about the experience of reading Thomas Hardy's novel, in college. I believe a useful lesson--about possibilities--was provided: that what can appear at first, to you, to be unsatisfying, unappealing, dull, might, ultimately, turn out to be valuable, important, and (sometimes) electrifying.
(Since its posting, yesterday, the preceding has been somewhat edited.)
