It’s possible, perhaps even admirable, to commend someone for undertaking an ambitious task while having no desire to do so oneself and still manage not to feel like a hypocrite. We also serve who stand and wait and let the other guy do the job. In this case, a longtime reader in California reports he has purchased all twenty-seven volumes of Jules Romains’ novel-cycle Les Hommes de bonne volonté, translated as Men of Good Will. The novels were published in English between 1932 and 1946, and total 7,219 pages.
“I’d never
heard of him nor of his big novel until just a couple of days ago,” my reader writes.
“I saw the complete Knopf set (all hardbacks in good condition) sitting on a
shelf in one of my favorite used bookshops. The entire set is of the first
edition.”
I wonder if
there was ever a second edition. That Sinclair Lewis judged Romains one of the
world’s six greatest novelists is another reason not to take on his roman-fleuve. Not that I’m knocking my
reader. Tastes in reading are ultimately personal and probably ineffable. De gustibus and all that, though as I’ve gotten
older I’ve developed a taste for shorter forms. Among certain readers there is
a romance attached to reading long novels and other books, especially when we
are young. My reader mentions having not yet read Anthony Powell’s twelve-novel
cycle A Dance to the Music of Time, Proust’s
seven-novel masterpiece or Patrick O’Brien’s twenty-novel Aubrey-Maturin series.
I’ve read Powell once, Proust twice and O’Brien never.
As a young
reader, I was aided by my inability to stop reading a book once I had started it.
Why? Guilt and pride. I wouldn’t let a book defeat me, regardless of how
tedious it was. I even read Melville’s Mardi
and Pierre. I read Gravity’s Rainbow when it was published
and again six months later when I was asked to review it for an “underground”
magazine. I learned from a review in the Youngstown Vindicator that Pynchon’s novel resembled The Recognitions by William Gaddis, which I had never heard of. I
read it and, as they were published, Gaddis’s subsequent unreadable novels. The
same goes for Gass’ The Tunnel.
It’s not
always about gritting your teeth and persevering. Some long works are rewarding
and even entertaining. Think of Gibbon’s Decline
and Fall and Henry Adams’ nine-volume History
of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison. Think of Ford Madox Ford’s four-novel Parade’s End, Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy and Thomas
Berger’s Carlos Reinhart tetralogy. And then recall what George Eliot wrote to
a correspondent after publishing Middlemarch:
“I don’t see
how the sort of thing I want to do could have been done briefly.”
2 comments:
I just finished Dreiser's An America Tragedy, knowing that the experience was going to be painful, and not just morally. I knew that if this kind of realism works at all it works cumulatively, and I was right. Mencken said that 80% of the novel was unnecessary, and in one sense he was right, but Clyde carried the weight of all those not strictly necessary words to the electric chair and that's what made the conclusion so powerful. A 250 page book wouldn't have had the same impact.
I'll admit that Melville's "Mardi" has defeated me after several attempts. This is strange, because I've enjoyed everything else he's written, including the "difficult" novels like "Confidence Man" and "Pierre". Aside from some experimental novels, I can't think of too many other works of fiction that have less forward momentum than "Mardi". (Thanks for mentioning Berger's "Reinhart" books. They gave me so much pleasure over the years, and I hope they don't disappear utterly after our generation cools.)
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