At what point, when reading, should you just give up? This is possibly one of the most important questions we face as readers in the digital age, when time is scarce and our collective reserves of attention are even scarcer. If you're one of those who would like to pretend that this question doesn't occur to you often, quit the act. Even those of us who are passionate about our futile efforts to become intellectually enlightened have those moments of mid-chapter book-dropping as we roll our eyes and open up our laptops.
This question of when to drop a book opens up the larger conversation of what each of us individually expects to gain from reading. A book is essentially a contract between a reader and a writer. The reader will devote time, energy and concentration to the act of reading and imaginatively engaging with the text, and in return, he or she expects to gain something worthwhile and beautiful that can't be found in a Sparknotes summary or a movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp. An ideal work of fiction balances entertainment value with more complex ideas and stylistic endeavors, and also balances the length and difficulty of the novel with the ultimate satisfaction of finishing it.
Of course, in the enormously varied landscape of literature, one can find differing perspectives on how these balances ought to play out. How much are you willing to invest yourself in an especially tedious book, assuming (hoping? praying?) that finishing it will leave you satisfied? Everyone needs his or her own rule of thumb for when to quit on a book. Personally, I go with my gut. I recognize that there is a requisite amount of struggle I should put up with for any book, but if that struggle ever completely eclipses my curiosity and desire to continue, than I question whether I should continue reading it at all. After all, life is short, books are long and my reading list is practically endless.
There have been some books that I believe I made the right decision to close the cover on, like "NW" (2012) by Zadie Smith. Although she is one of my favorite authors, I believe that the somber realism of her latest novel simply wasn't for me, and I'm glad I gave myself the chance to move on to other things at that time. There have been some books that I'm not so proud of having put away, as well. According to friends, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (2000) by Michael Chabon would have been a wonderful experience if I had kept up with it. Additionally, like anyone, I have a few too many half-finished classics on the bookshelves of the house I grew up in. Also worth mentioning are the kinds of books that I dearly wish that I had said goodbye to midway through and saved myself the time. JohnathanLethem's "Fortress of Solitude" (2003) was interesting, I'll give it that, but I'll mostly remember it as over five hundred pages of poorly-paced indulgently narcissistic re-imaginings of the author's childhood that failed to be funny when it could have been, failed to be emotionally striking when it definitely was trying to be and threw in a science fiction twist halfway through what was otherwise a realist novel. I'm still a bit grumpy about the whole experience.
Anyways, what I hope you take from all of this, dear reader, is that giving up on a book is like ending a relationship: you shouldn't do it every time you hit a bump in the road, but sometimes you'll come to the inevitable conclusion that you and Stephen King are just incompatible people.
Kevin Criscione is a sophomore majoring in English. He can be reached at Kevin.Crisione@tufts.edu.
