People read for a variety of reasons. I’m talking about reading as a voluntary act, as opposed to, say, reading the Noli or Fili as a course requirement; you are not supposed to do a report/be quizzed on a book and love said book, too — that’s perverse. For an author to be required reading almost always unfairly ruins that author for legions of students. García-Márquez did not enchant as much when Bernie Oloroso, a wonderful teacher, made us write about No One Writes to the Colonel; same with Solzhenitsyn (not that he could enchant as much as sober you up), assigned to me by the equally wonderful Shanta Krishnaswamy — I was as miserable reading The Cancer Ward as any of its characters. Hey, a lot of kids were miserable with Rizal, too.
But I digress.
Confronted with a vast array of books to choose from, as in a library, bookstore, or online shop like Amazon or Barnes & Noble, what do you do? That’s easy: you seek out your favorite authors. I hear Neil Gaiman has a new one. Don’t have that yet? How about the latest Umberto Eco? Out of stock? No, I am not interested in the new Anne Rice; make that any Anne Rice. Okay, how about Christopher Moore? Come again? What do you mean, Christopher Moore who? (You get a lot of that at National.)
So you move on to recommendations. Your friends have been ragging you to read Twilight; they’re all over Facebook updating their status: X is reading Book Two, Book Three, yadayadayada; they tell you that if you liked the movie then you will adore the books. No, you have not seen the movie; have no intention of reading the series, either. You reckon that if you have to read about angst-ridden adolescents then Holden Caulfield will do just fine. Besides, you remember the last book you bought: it was Gary Shteyngart’s supremely tiresome Absurdistan. And who had heartily recommended that one? The New York Times Book Review, that’s who.
Not to worry, though. Finding that right book becomes even more rewarding when it involves a measure of luck and serendipity, not to mention a certain doggedness bordering on obsession. It takes time, too — lots of it; that is why your friends make you swear on your dog’s grave not to venture inside a bookstore when you go malling, because chances are you will be stuck there for the rest of the day. And why not? You have lots of things to consider before deciding to buy a book: cover art, author (care to buy one by Kinky Friedman?), subject matter, the blurbs on the jacket, thickness/thinness, price, size, heft… It’s complicated as to be almost arbitrary.
Are you aware, though, that there are some people who inform their decision solely by reading a book’s first page? Nothing wrong with that, of course. It even makes some sense, except that if you rigidly stick to that rule, there are a couple of great books you would miss out on. Anyone remember the first three paragraphs of Foucault’s Pendulum
That was when I saw the Pendulum.
The sphere, hanging from a long wire set into the ceiling of the choir, swayed back and forth with isochronal majesty.
I knew — but anyone could have sensed it in the magic of that serene breathing — that the period was governed by the square root of the length of the wire and by π, that number which, however irrational to sublunar minds, through a higher rationality binds the circumference and diameter of all possible circles. The time it took the sphere to swing from end to end was determined by an arcane conspiracy between the most timeless of measures: the singularity of the point of suspension, the duality of the plane’s dimensions, the triadic beginning of π, the secret quadratic nature of the root, and the unnumbered perfection of the circle itself.
It’s amusing how beautifully those words read now — now that you have read the book more times than is probably healthy — because you clearly remember your initial reaction to them: What the fuck is this guy talking about? You went ahead and read the whole thing, anyway — even if it was set in type so damned small you were sure it was because to have done otherwise would have fattened it to well over its 500+ pages. You certainly did well not to judge that book by its cover, but also by its dense and ponderous opening.
Or did you? Oh my.
Nah, just kidding. These days it’s hard enough to get people to read a book without questioning their approach — or worse, belittling it. But here’s a more compelling reason why you shouldn’t:
Since Maria had decided to die her cat would have to fend for itself. She’d already cared for it far beyond the point where keeping a pet made any sense. Rats and mice had long since been trapped and eaten by the villagers. Domestic animals had disappeared shortly after that. All except for one, this cat, her companion which she’d kept hidden. Why hadn’t she killed it? She needed something to live for; something to protect and love — something to survive for. She’d made a promise to continue feeding it up until the day she could no longer feed herself. That day was today. She’d already cut her leather boots into thin strips, boiled them with nettles and beetroot seeds. She’d already dug for earthworms, sucked on bark. This morning in a feverish delirium she’d gnawed the leg of her kitchen stool, chewed and chewed until there were splinters jutting out of her gums. Upon seeing her the cat had run away, hiding under the bed, refusing to show itself even as she’d knelt down, calling its name, trying to coax it out. That had been the moment Maria decided to die, with nothing to eat and nothing to love.
Doesn’t that make you want to grab that book? Many authors would kill for an opening like that. That first line just grabs you by the balls (feel free to substitute with the appropriate body part[s] if you do not have those) and sucks you right into the story, establishing the tone, propelling the narrative forward as the succeeding details build the atmosphere, until you reach the last sentence and realize that you have been holding your breath. It’s amazing how each sentence uncoils into the next with relentless inevitability.
Uncoil? Exactly, because sentences (and paragraphs) and stories are woven, and this one is as tight as it gets. That initial paragraph sets the tone for the entire book with nary an unnecessary adjective or adverb or punctuation mark; it grabs you, holds you, and spits you right back out, deflated but hungry for more. It’s merciless and it works. It’s from Child 44
This post has no comments.
Post a Comment