Read to the End.
I am thinking of the English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, how excited I was to finally read it, how hurtful it was (of me, to me) when the first two hundred pages passed in abject boredom. The masterpiece was not as promised, perhaps I was not the reader I thought I was. Here is a novel, I mused, made unwieldy by the weight of it’s “literary” qualities. Before long I began to consider how short life was and how I should probably spend it reading good shit.
Until page 235, when I came upon this sentence, “I am a man who fasts until I see what I want.” And it felt to me a great revelation of mine own character, or the character of a man I hoped to one day become. I love this sentence still, it lingers in my thoughts, and in moments when I am unsure of myself, I call it up from the deep to show the truth of things. From that sentence on, The English Patient became a different book for me, a keener and engrossing one.
I am thinking of the English Patient because it’s just happened again. This time it’s Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It’s a tiny thing, this book, two hundred and thirty seven pages, and yet it’s taken me four weeks to read it. The opening chapter was brilliant, but afterwards the novel seemed to shrink from itself, to back away from glimpsed greatness. I was bored for most of the next hundred pages, bored and disappointed as I tend to be. But I am finished now and I find that I am touched as I have rarely been. I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. This novel is a great thing, a hopeful thing, a proud thing and I have never been more afraid and more grateful to be a writer. I am not crying but my eyes are a little misty, I am aware of the silly sentimentality come over me but I am not ashamed. I am hopeful even, for Africa, for fiction.
And to think I almost put it aside!
Tomorrow I will harden. Tomorrow I will read the news of home and consider it against my hope. Tomorrow, this novel will be one of the best thing’s I’ve ever read, but only just that. This is why I write this now, while I am stunned still, while I reconsider my writing and more, when the iron is hot and I am a gooey, hyperbole gushing machine. And so a note to tomorrow, a reminder for the next boring or difficult novel I struggle with:
Have faith. Read to the end.
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Nice to see you blogging again!
I felt similarly to you about The English Patient, especially since I had read Ondaatje’s previous two novels (which I think flowed better). I found myself loving the book when I was done. I even want to read it again.
some words do jump out at the reader and keeps them musing for a while.
this is one of the qualities of a good book.
Always exciting to see a new post here :) Glad to hear the book hit you so much, I, too, loved it. It’s a hard one isn’t it? Sometimes it’s so worth reading to the end, and other times not at all. Perhaps the type of book influences this? Or it’s background? I want a rule! heh