Mrs M's London
Mrs M's London
Mrs M's Rants & Raves
LITERATURE-INDUCED SHAME
Written by Atticus   
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 00:00

I've had to retire from the literati, says Atticus. I've just been beaten by Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I struggled manfully through "the Booker of Bookers" but, three quarters in, made the innocent mistake of picking up a John Updike book, Rabbit Redux.

"Um, I wonder what this is like – I'll have to read it sometime, after I've finished Midnight's Children of course" before turning to the first page just to see what it was like. It felt like the rain had finally come after an uncomfortably hot and sweaty summer. Several days later, Rabbit Redux now finished, I'm contemplating my shameful act.

Can I recapture some semblance of intellectual integrity? I've only just got to pick it up and crack on through those last 80 – 80! – pages to regain the moral high ground. It's just all those ... scattered everywhere started to wear me down. It's only slightly less painful than the Juan Goytisolo novel that doesn't contain any punctuation whatsoever. Maybe I'm not in the right situation and frame of mind – both key elements to enjoyment (and completion) of a book.

I learnt this the hard way some years ago when I attempted to read Swann's Way by Proust while commuting to work on the tube. It was a thankless and fruitless task. Proust is the master of diversions: taking the reader on long, fascinating tangents until you realise that this is what his writing is all about. But try to read it in fifteen minute spurts while wedged into a corner of a tube carriage and you quickly lose all sense of the journey into memory and the past that the writer is taking you on and instead start to live in an agonising present in which rising blood pressure is a key feature. I struggled valiantly on, until I suddenly perceived the futility.

Now I think about it, that's two literary disasters that need resolving...maybe I'll book a holiday just to finish both. Perhaps I could even tackle War and Peace or Ulysses as well? It's won't be fun, and it's all a little late in the day, but at least it'll save me from the shame of reading a synopsis of Midnight's Children on wikipedia, just to find out how it all ended.
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Comments (1)
1 Tuesday, 14 July 2009 10:03
Jonas of Soho
I had the same problem with Midnight's Children and haven't finished it yet. I didn't know I could get the ending on wikipedia. Thanks!

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