Tom Bissell's recent essay about books he's ashamed of being unable to read has sparked some great comments on Salon, largely from people who want to defend the "great" books. William Faulkner is high on Bissell's list of authors he really can't relate to, and having spent some time recently reading a good deal of Faulkner I can say that I can understand where Bissell is coming from. However, I also think that, for example, As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury are worth the effort it takes to get through them. You may never "like" or "relate to" a book like this, but, again, I think that's part of the point of the book. Faulkner's characters aren't, by and large, very likeable. His scenes are often hot and sticky and dirty and creepy and all the kinds of things we'd really prefer not to think about. But a lot of the world is like that -- uglier than we'd like it to be -- and we can't just "choose" not to look at or think about those parts of life because we don't "like" them. In fact, many of the writers Bissell denounces -- Henry James, R.W. Emerson, Theodore Dreiser, Herman Melville -- are writers whose texts seem explicitly to challenge their readers' vision of the world. As readers, we often don't like to face our own stereotypes or to see the the things we take for granted exposed as illusory or corrupt, but it's something we probably should do now and then, don't you think?
At the same time, a lot of "great" books really are overrated. Bissell's great mistake was in admitting he'd never really read most of the writers he condemns. Now if he reads them and still hates them, well, then he might have something...
11:36:36 AM 
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