A Bookmark by Thomas M. Disch
I came across this in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. I had to laugh. I’ve not read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, nor do I particularly care to after this not-so-glowing review. I remembered that this was on the list of longest novels at Wikipedia and is even said to hold the Guinness Book of Records title for longest novel. (That list is special to me because I’ve read two of the seventeen in Latin/Cyrillic alphabets and I don’t intend to read the rest.) Anyway, I can sympathize with someone who reads something because he/she feels he/she ought to, but must “slog through.” I refuse to do that anymore, though. If I’m not getting something good out of my reading experience, I quit (though an easier solution is not to choose books I don’t believe I’ll get nothing out of).
A Bookmark
By Thomas M. Disch
Four years ago I started reading Proust.
Although I’m past the halfway point, I still
Have seven hundred pages of reduced
Type left before I reach the end. I will
Slog through. It can’t get much more dull than what
Is happening now: he’s buying crepe-de-chine
Wraps and a real, well-documented hat
For his imaginary Albertine.
Oh, what a slimy sort he must have been—
So weak, so sweetly poisonous, so fey!
Four years ago, by God!—and even then
How I was looking forward to the day
I would be able to forgive, at last,
And to forget Remembrance of Things Past.
