Return to Sender

Two weeks  ago I picked up my early Christmas present sitting unwrapped on top of a low wall in front of a Victorian house across the street from my local  supermarket.  It was a 773 page novel from a highly acclaimed and reclusive author, whose previous or later books  I hadn't read (this one has Copyright 1997), although I think I've seen his most famous tome (they are all tomes, doorstops), 784 pages of it, around the house, which work I don't remember ever buying  or reading, perhaps it was a gift or the darn cat dragged it in, or perhaps I don't even own it (I've looked up the number of pages on Amazon.)

I carried this brick walking down the hill home, a full  mile to be exact, sat down in a chair and tried to read it.  I noticed lines  underlined in thin black ink, and some paragraphs similarly bracketed on the margins,  this on the first few pages that I checked, the book must have been read by whoever was giving it away.

I am a badly read reader, who hasn't read the right classics, and doesn't read the mainstream critics' favorites, the East Coast establishment writers, or Tom Wolfe's Three Stooges, though I have made attempts , and have read Tom Wolfe himself.  I do read some critics, though not the godawful New York Times female critic, and follow some of their recommendations, preferring unheralded writers and debuts. I think I must have read three or four first novels last year, all of them excellent. I stay away from crowd favorites, from topical novels of misery among the poor, oppressed, violent and drugged here and in the Third World, novels about divorces of the authors' (those Three Stooges again) obvious standins, who are invariably in these books college professors or some other academics. Call me a snob.

And so, I made another attempt, and I lasted all of  two pages.  Incomprehensible and unreadable.  I just scanned the book now, and the last pen marked  bracketed paragraph I see is on page 22.  Somebody lasted longer than I.  I am going to return this book to the place where I found it, if I can identify the house  (several houses on that block have similar walls in front)  inserting perhaps a note between the pages which says "Unreadable". Or let the next luckless reader find out for himself.  Yes, that'll learn 'im!