In Which The Art Of Quitting Isn't Hard To Master
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 11:16AM 
End of Story
by Will Hubbard
I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.
- Lawrence Durrell
Not finishing books is the kind of terrible habit one acquires from an ex-girlfriend. She's gone, but her vices stick around. It's in the same category as drinking exotic fruit juices, or taking muscle relaxants.
In a certain way, beginning a book resembles travel to a foreign country—new tastes, new values, new forms of devotion and sacrifice. Devouring the four books of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, for example, is hardly distinguishable from actually visiting the rueful, coy Alexandria in which they are set. And as is true of any vacation, packing up prematurely and leaving such a world of fiction diminishes the experience only slightly.
There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.
It must be that the vast majority of our comprehension and awe in a new environment happens within moments of making its acquaintance. Three days pass, and while there will always be more to see, there is little left to learn. And so the last days of many vacations, like the last 100 pages of many novels, seem capricious.
My own bookshelves hold more books abandoned than read all the way through. Books I've told people were dear to me, books I've taught, books for which I've written glowing reviews - all only partially apprehended.
So, what is in an ending?
As many have suggested, endings are a truce the author makes with her talent--an agreement to begin living again outside the story, to return to 'real' life. Endings are a purely artificial constraint (pure and artificial), and philosophically speaking, the characters simply must go on living regardless of even the best endings.
It's hard to think of a greater tragedy than that, which perhaps is part of our desire to finish a book—to feel the cathartic brunt of having to separate from its persons, its tastes, its devotions. The other part must come from the vanquishing of the text itself, from the leaving of no stone (word) unturned.
For those of us who happily choose to forgo those pleasures, blaming any one distraction or temperament would be folly. Book-abandoning is surely in greatest evidence among the non-obsessives and quitters, but those who work or love too much are equally susceptible. Most often, of course, it is the exhilarating beginning of a new book that intercedes, and yet another aborted Alexandria is added to the bedside stack.
Will Hubbard is the contributing editor to This Recording. He tumbles here.
"My Secret Lover" - Private (mp3)
"That Boy Is Hurting You" - Private (mp3)
Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.
"Rocket" - Albert Hammond Jr (mp3)
"Spooky Couch" - Albert Hammond Jr (mp3)
GO READ SOMETHING INSTEAD
Will Hubbard on the Alphabet
Summer Reading Part One
Brittany Julious on Kazuo Ishiguro
Summer Reading Part Two
from here
Tao Lin on K-Mart Realism
Summer Reading Part Three
Good Will Syllabusing
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING
George met BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh.
A.C. Hawley turf-talked Friday Night Lights
We are trying to break your heart.
Reader Comments (4)
I chuck out the Half-reads..if the authors can't keep me reading to the end...then they are out. Car-boot.
I also give away the Finishers because I know someone else will enjoy the ending as well.
No sweat.
I wouldn't give a Half-read to anyone else I know. It"s a kind of shame at not spotting it was a duffer. It is rare because I have a nearly foolproof way to spot a book that's a Finisher.
I have a small collection of Treasureds that I would not give away. About a small backpacks worth. Xtra specials they be.
I read Justine and Balthazar for a modernism class and devoured the other two over Christmas break. And I still can't get enough. Durrell might be the crack of the literary world.
I wonder if book-abandoners are the same types who walk out of movies, send back mediocre food in restaurants and throw out whole sections of the Sunday Times (Real Estate section, Escapes section.) In other words: people in whom a sense of consumer entitlement, a firm knowledge of their own tastes, and a general impatience all coincide.
I my have abandoned the book, but not the idea of the book.