When I lived in Taipei in the early 1990s, I read Atlas Shrugged. It is not the worst novel that I ever started, but it may be the worst novel I ever finished. I was new to Taiwan at the time and had yet to find a bookstore with an English language section. I was content to read anything I could find.
The number of novels I’ve read in their entirety and strongly disliked is few. The number of novels that I’ve liked, but have failed to finish, is a bigger number. Of those, Moby Dick and The Grapes of Wrath are the two that bother me the most.
I have read the first fifty pages of Moby Dick at least a half dozen times. Each time I am engaged in the book right up to Melville’s lengthy description of rigging. I should just skip the part about lines and capstans and masts, but it somehow feels like cheating not to read each and every chapter. Because of my stubbornness in this regard, I have yet to get the Pequod out of Nantucket.
I have a harder time explaining why I have never read all of The Grapes of Wrath. In terms of tight prose, I set Ivan Doig, Wallace Stegner, and John Steinbeck apart from other writers, so reading Steinbeck’s masterwork should be easy. I’ve read all of his shorter novels, and Cannery Row is one of my favorite books of all time. Still I have never finished The Grapes of Wrath. I own a paperback copy, but my days of reading small print are over. I could get a hardcover version at the library or at a used bookstore, but have not. I could even read the paperback in small doses, savoring a couple chapters before my eyes start to ache, but instead I wait a year and start over from the beginning. Apparently I read the same way I write, always going back to the beginning and working through the old stuff before taking on the new.
I have been thinking about the good books I have yet to read because I’ve recently been making frequent trips back and forth to Madison. At first, it was for doctor visits with my brother-in-law. Now it is for veterinary visits with my dog. To relieve the boredom of Interstate 90, I decided to get a book on tape for the drive. Last week at the library, I held audio versions of both Moby Dick and The Grapes of Wrath in my hands. I settled on The Grapes of Wrath, and a round trip to Madison (two and half hours each way) brought me almost to the place in the book where I last stopped reading. The Joad family had just loaded up their truck to head West.
Like Tom Joad, I once snuck out of a state to start a new life in California. Tom couldn’t leave Oklahoma because he was on parole for murder. I couldn’t leave Massachusetts because my old Vega panel truck couldn’t pass the state’s auto emissions test. Tom Joad and I were just two bad boys destined for the road.
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