DA CAPO AL FINE

posted by James Reel

    Terry Teachout makes a case for abandoning books:

I wholeheartedly endorse pulling the plug on books you don’t like. … I expect a lot out of the books I read, and when they fail to deliver the goods, I toss them aside with a clear conscience and no second thoughts. Life is so very short—and so often shorter than we expect—that it seems a fearful mistake to waste even the tiniest part of it submitting voluntarily to unnecessary boredom.

    This is fine advice that I just can’t bring myself to follow. First, I’m pretty good at judging the appeal of a book before I start reading, so I rarely have any reason to give up. But beyond that, I feel a responsibility to the author not to skim; I owe careful consideration to each word the author has put in place. Of course, as a journalist/critic (that is, non-creative writer) myself, I know perfectly well that words frequently get spewed out without much thought, in an effort to meet an impending deadline or merely fulfill an assignment accepted with little enthusiasm. Still, with each book or magazine I pick up, there’s a good chance that each word will be golden. Isn’t it pretty to think so?
    In support of his aversion to commitment, Terry quotes Samuel Johnson’s dismissal of the notion that one must pursue a book through to its end:

This is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?

    Well, how are we to know that there’s only one thing worth knowing in it until we read it all through? The payoff may come rather late; this is a weakness of craft, but however late the thing worth knowing comes, perseverence is rewarded. And as for Dr. Johnson’s remark about the silliness of keeping acquaintances for life, this is one of the reasons Johnson was more admired than loved. I’ve allowed a few friends to fall by the wayside over the years, but I choose my friends as carefully as I choose my books, and I try to maintain fidelity to them as long as they remain interested in me. Good books, I think, are worthy of similar consideration.
    Bad operas, on the other hand, I’m only too happy to abandon after one dull or inept act. Opera is, after all, one of the lower forms of musical expression, hobbled as it usually is by inept librettos and amateurish staging and acting. No point suffering through early Verdi when I could be home reading.
    Now, if only I could figure out a way to get through my 10-month backlog of magazines, which I insist on reading cover to cover …