Today I stopped reading PICTURES FROM AN INSTITUTION by Randall Jarrell after only 30 pages. It's probably the best book that I didn't finish. It's not the first. There have been others, but they went unfinished because they were monumentally bad. Most of these were science fiction novels which lived up to neither of the genre's title words. In almost every case the book committed the unforgivable sin of assuming I was an idiot.
But this book, does not assume that I'm an idiot. It assumes nothing of me. For that matter, cares not one jot for my being its reader at all. I am not its target audience. This is not the problem however.
The problem is that I am just not in the right state of mind to sit through a couple hundred pages of inside jokes and snide comments about academia in the early 50's. Yes, I did laugh with recognition at some of the characters and situations, and the writing itself is fine, though the overall flow is a bit choppy for my taste.
So why the guilt? I guess as a writer I would want my readers to finish my books. Not finishing a not-terrible book seems like a betrayal to the profession. A commitment of the sin of the whim of personal preference. Don't I have a duty as a writer and a reader to fulfill the sacred bond entered into when I read the first words of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book?
No. Not today. I'm just not in the mood.
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Talk to me dude