The Battle With the Windmills...

After Sparks wrote about the books that have defeated him, we discussed a few of them & how sometimes it is almost embarrassing to admit out loud that you can’t finish a classic work of literature.

There are of course many classics out there that I have not read. I try to read as much as possible but it not easy to get around to everything. The one that came to mind first was Don Quixote. Though I am an avid reader & would like to consider myself a fairly intelligent reader when it comes to processing or discussing literature, this masterpiece has eluded me.
As far as Don Quixote is concerned I first tried to read it right after I read Moby-Dick. I thought following one epic sea tale with an epic Spanish novel about a delusional conquistador was going to be amazing…& it was at first. I made it probably about 200 pages before putting down the Cervantes & settling back into Melville with his short stories.
My next attempt was when I was in college & thought that perhaps Don Quixote had not been right because of my quick love for Melville & therefore had suffered for not being one of Melville’s books. Still I only managed to get about 300 pages in.
To make this story a little shorter I will say that I have tried at least four different translations, that anytime I see a copy I have a strong urge to buy it & read it.

The farthest I have read is about 400 pages in the Edith Grossman translation. I’m not completely sure what it is that makes this book so hard for me to read. It is not as difficult as many books that I have read, it is not the size, I’ve read plenty of Tolstoy & Dostoevsky, I just can’t seem to find my way to the end…

Books I own, books that own me.

Last week's post about my summer of reading classics got me thinking about those books I've attempted to read that have defeated me. These are the books that I've taken up full of eagerness to scale the great peaks of literature, the canonical works capable of transforming me from an ordinary reader into one of the elect, a great reader, while simultaneously making me a better person. Instead, they owned me. These books are the schoolyard bullies among my library - they shattered my confidence, humiliated me, and kept me away from the playground for days.

These are not bad books - far from it. They are inarguable masterpieces. Why else would I attempt to read them? For various reasons, however, I have failed as a reader when it comes to the titles I hope to unveil over the following few weeks.

I present them in order of the psychological trauma they inflicted upon me, starting this week with the book that above all others torments me: Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry. I have attempted to read this book five times.

The first time I began, I was seventeen. Something about the dissolution of the novel's main character enticed me. A straight-laced kid from the suburbs loves nothing more than reading about an alcoholic in an exotic place. I gave up 8 pages in, certain that I was not yet mature enough to "get" the book.

The second and third attempts were in my mid-twenties. I was living in a beach resort town. In the late afternoon, after work, I would sit on the deserted beach and plough through classic after classic: one summer alone I chased Moby-Dick with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I gulped down Murakami, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Mann without hesitation.

But not Malcolm Lowery. He proved himself a worthy nemesis two successive summers, insolently mocking my attempts to get further than page 37.

I tried another approach the fourth time - it was January. Maybe the reason I couldn't find my way into the labyrinth that is Under the Volcano was due to the fact that I was reading it in the wrong season? Not so. January proved no more amenable than June. Defeated again.

Finally, last summer I was traveling through the Mosquito Coast in Honduras. Among the obsessively chosen books I tossed in my backpack was, yes, Under the Volcano. If I couldn't read it on the beach or under the covers on a winter night, I would definitely be able to read it in the jungle, if for no other reason than that I would be forced to by my lack of options. Well, the jungle proved slightly more worthy - I got to page 50 this time, but no further.

Am I simply incompatible with Malcolm Lowery's book? Are we never to get along? It's still sitting on my shelf. After all of our hours together - I'm convinced the book has suffered along with me - we have yet to part ways. We're still hopeful that some day, in whatever imperfect circumstance and season, we will complete our journey.

And immediately after both will go our separate ways.

Summer Reading

Kevin H. pointed out one of the benefits of being involved in bookselling in his last post, and while being inundated daily with the best new releases can be exciting, it can also be exhausting trying to play catch-up.

No matter how many highly-touted debut story collections you read, or how many hefty histories you plough through, there's alway something else greedily demanding your attention. (Ahem.) The book reviews and blogs, customer requests and co-workers' recommendations, and a full shelf of advanced reading copies in our breakroom all add up to an almost feverish pitch - I've got to keep up! The bedside stack soon topples over under the deluge of the latest "must-reads," so that last week's must reads are quickly forgotten. Appropriate, I suppose, for our age of short attentions.

When I take a moment to collect myself, I realize that there's no need to rush. Books, despite the sometimes hysterical rhetoric about their imminent demise, will be around for a while yet. (Hopefully, I will as well.) Indeed, patience often provides its own pleasures. With this in mind, I have decided to dedicate my summer reading to classics that I have overlooked, have been meaning to get around to, or that are too intimidating. Or, hell, that are just too big.

First up, Sentimental Education, which I bought while in an excited state after reading Madame Bovary and yet have let collect dust on my shelves for almost 10 years now. (Madame Bovary is, of course, a must. For those with a taste for the bizarre and erudite, The Temptation of Saint Anthony is a marvel - and completely unexpected. If you are really into Flaubert, I recommend his Egyptian journals, which reveal among other things his distinctly 19th century fondness for prostitutes.)

Maybe Flaubert's "lesser" works are no longer fashionable, but 150 pages has convinced me of the psychological acuity of his depiction of the follies and joys of youth (often one in the same thing). Without giving anything away, the story follows the fortunes of Frederic Moreau, whose passion for an older married woman, the lovely Madame Arnoux, provides the hook upon which Flaubert hangs an at times tender and pessimistic satire of his culture, which feels surprisingly modern.

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Now, care to share your summer reading?