Last week, on a whim, I decided to start reading “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie. Though it has never been a book high on my “to read” list, I took the plunge when I chanced upon it in the library stacks.
A week later and 300 pages in, I had to put it down. I couldn’t make myself go any further.
And it’s not because I didn’t like the book. Au contraire, mes cheris. I liked it a lot. “The Satanic Verses” is funny and spasmodic and propulsive, but it also grinds on you like a pestle. Over a week of reading, that book was an attrition of my attention span. Why is that?
“The Satanic Verses” isn’t the only book where I’ve encountered this principle. Every time I try reading a Don DeLillo book, everything grinds to a halt. I feel like I’m forcing my way up from the bottom of the ocean. DeLillo’s ocean. I don’t know whether I’ll ever read a book by Vladmir Nabokov without similar struggles, outside maybe the slim coterie of his accepted classics.
What’s happening? Am I just getting older? Am I settling into some manner that could be termed “my ways?” Have I ossified thus? What a (shit or bummer) proposition for someone barely through college.
I don’t know if that’s it, though.
Instead, I have a theory. To wit: After a certain point, the Reader qua Reader is incapable of assimilating a body of text in a way betokening “interest” or “pleasure,” probably caused by some prejudice or bias that is both arbitrary and unfortunate. The thrill is gone.
The question, of course, is finding evidence of this theory in work. Why some books and not others? What’s a probable prognosis for all this? I have my examples, though I’d be hard pressed to explain why I feel that way to another person, especially a Rushdie, DeLillo or Nabokov fan.
I know what rattled me about “The Satanic Verses” over the week I spent reading it: the pace. I kept thinking, damn this book is fast. And yet, I felt like I had barely made any headway into it. It was like interminable turbulence on a trans-atlantic flight—and I opted to bail.
Now, would it have been better/easier to have picked up “The Satanic Verses” earlier? When my limbs were sprightly, when my head was clear, when I wasn’t the old man I am today, having to deal with all the sassafrassin’ freshmen walking down the middle of the bike lane in peak traffic—like some SLACKJAWED SHEEP—and all related biz?
Probably not. I give young me credit for deciding “Ulysses” was worth spending all of spring break reading and deciding it’s totally not unreasonable to check out 30 books at once and lug them home in a canvas bag for three-fourths of a mile (uphill!). But I can’t gleam from that that I would have enjoyed “The Satanic Verses.”
And I don’t think I’ve slowed down, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
I do believe, after a certain point, you can’t read certain books. Or you can’t read them in the way that will get you the most enjoyment. Kurt Vonnegut said he never read “Madame Bovary” until he was 40, which, in reason, is one of those texts anyone interested in writing/reading just picks up. Whether or not he liked “Madame Bovary” is beside the point. He was implying he had missed the window of opportunity for fully assimilating it, for it to have lasting import in his mind/method.
It’s a troubling thought, when you look at the vast swath of books that “should” be read, with no reasonable measure of whether or not you (yes, you) can read them. Even condensed into one of those cat-killing “Books You Must Read Before You Kick The Bucket” tomes, it’s a heady proposition.
Of course, the vastness of literature is what makes it so delightful. Perhaps you, reader or writer, will miss out on the chance to read “Lolita” or “The Wings of the Dove” or “The Divine Comedy” the way other people read it—by which I mean reverently, enthusiastically, ecstatically, etc.—but maybe you have your own collection of reverences and ecstasies.
It’s a shame to come to a book and not have the means/interest to read it with pleasure and then some, but it’s not the end of everything. If anything, you should take it as an opportunity to see why you’re resistant/reluctant in the face of a book. Maybe you’ll unknot that resistance. I’m trying.
Is there a book you’ve tried and tried to read but you just can’t make it? Tell Sean at sreichard@wisc.edu.
