A Page Too Far

There are four movies that I'd love to see next weekend -- The Reader, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- but I can only spare the time to see one of them. Obviously, a bit of cinematic triage is in order. I favor The Wrestler over The Reader by a tad, but The Reader was released first, and my inner stickler enjoys viewing things in their proper order. Revolutionary Road sounds riveting, but I'm vaguely leery of a movie pairing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio (sorry, Titanic fans). The obvious choice is probably Benjamin Button -- it received thirteen Academy Award nominations -- but I'm embarrassed to say that the length of the movie - almost three hours -- gives me pause. Benjamin Button may age backwards during the course of the movie, but I'm pretty sure my rear end will be aging forward in a fashion that will render it numb by the time the closing credits roll, and I'm not sure I'm ready to make that kind of commitment.

What does any of this have to do with books (other than the "curious" fact that Benjamin Button was ostensibly inspired by one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories)? I've known many people who routinely avoid movies exceeding two hours in length, even when the movies at issue are, by all accounts, well worth the time. No amount of cajoling will force them into a movie theater for longer than the standard 120 minutes, period. Although I tend to reproach this absolutist attitude by time-skimping moviegoers, it's possible I'm their literary counterpart when it comes to reading "big books."

You know the kind of books I'm talking about. In my world, books with four hundred to five hundred pages should be approached with caution, books with more than six hundred pages fall squarely into a personal red zone, and if minuscule print is part of the mix, an alarm begins to go off in my head. I may not realize it at the time, but there's no way I'm reading that book. That's not to say, however, that I don't try. Take, for example, my earnest attempt to read The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, last year. The Name of the Wind, the first volume in a projected three-volume fantasy series entitled The Kingkiller Chronicles, received astounding reviews in the year of its release (2007). Orson Scott Card and Ursula LeGuin fawned over it, fantasy sites immediately pegged it as THE fantasy debut of the year, some reviewers dared to make favorable comparisons with Lord of the Rings, and others crowned Rothfuss as Robert Jordan's heir. If I was going to dive into a fantasy novel (not my usual fare), this was the book to read, despite the fact that it weighed in at 897 pages.

Initially, things went swimmingly. The first page of the book swept me in with a cadenced lyricism and poetic weight that took my breath away. As I continued reading the book for the next few days, I continued to marvel at the author's ability to create vivid images and complex characters in a world that was totally alien, and yet strangely similar, to my own. The plot was engaging, the writing was wonderful, and then, about two weeks into the book, I caught myself performing an act that presaged doom. I paused my reading, turned the book on end, and measured my progress on an "inches" basis. I estimated that I was about one quarter of the way through the book. Not content to make do with a rough estimate, I took note of the page I was on and performed a bit of arithmetic. Not good. As I continued reading the book, I gradually began concentrating more on my "progress" than on the story. I returned the book, unfinished, within the week.*

David Foster Wallace's untimely death in September of 2008 catapulted his mammoth novel, The Infinite Jest, (1996) back into the literary limelight. Despite its gargantuan proportions (the paperback edition is 1088 pages), I decided to give it a try. I returned it to the library after two days. The first sentence of a Publisher's Weekly review of the book says it all: "With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel . . . will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis." (I can't say I wasn't warned.) I found myself wondering whether the novel's title was not so much a title as a description of Wallace's joke on the hapless reader. Infinite jest, indeed.

Never one to place much value on past experience, I recently checked out all 912 pages of Robert Bolano's "2666", published posthumously in November of 2008. Once again, I was taken in by glowing reviews; how can you resist descriptors like "astonishing . . . a world-encompassing masterpiece . . . the finest novel of this century . . . "? Even those reviewers who felt morally compelled to warn prospective readers of the novel's deadly length were positive in their assessment. Publisher's Weekly dubbed it a "brilliant behemoth" and Barnes and Noble called it a 900-page cinderblock of a book, but in a good way. For me, it was mostly in a bad way. I gave the book to another reader after a week of earnest attempts to wade into the water and swim the distance. (In all fairness to Bolano, he initially intended for the book to be published in five separate parts over just as many years. In all fairness to me, I don't think I should feel guilty about returning a book that Mr. Bolano thought I would need five years to read.)

I tend to be skeptical about people who say they've read and enjoyed books of mind-numbing length, and apparently I'm not the only one. I remember reading an article (Books section of the Sunday New York Times??) about The Crimson Petal and the White, a 960-page historical novel by Michel Faber. The book enjoyed effusive reviews when it came out in 2003, and apparently it was talked up as "the intelligent person's historical novel" in every NYC cocktail party worth attending. The article's author contended that upon close investigation, it could be determined that none of the book's devotees had actually read the book. They were simply choristers in a literary echo chamber; some had begun reading the book, others had read the reviews and intended to read the book, and so forth. I don't doubt the writer's experience in the least. I am particularly suspicious of people who tout lengthy books that are known for being intellectually brilliant and/or a vanguard of innovative literary expression. I may believe that you enjoyed (and completed) Gone With the Wind, (hardback, 1048 pages), but I'm going to have to take your same statement about Ulysses (paperback, 816 pages) with a grain of salt. I don't see how a book like that can be anything else but excruciating. Add around 500 more pages to it, and I think you've come up with a diabolical alternative to Gitmo.

That being said, I welcome your suggestions about any "big books" you have read that were well worth the time. Ever the optimist, I'm currently on the waiting list to borrow Anathem (Neal Stephenson's latest fantasy novel, purported to be brilliant by professional reviewers and, more importantly, my own daughter) from my local library. Page count: 960. Here we go again.
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*Most science fiction/fantasy readers have an ability to deal with lengthy books, and if you are fantasy fan, I recommend that you check Rothfuss's novel out tomorrow. (My daughter, an avid fan of Neal Stephenson, has patiently explained to me why many science fiction/fantasy works are so long. When an author creates an entirely new and unique universe, he/she can no longer call upon the reader to "fill in the blanks." The author is obliged to fill in every detail of the unprecedented mental canvas he/she is creating, and that takes more descriptive space than usual).