Slogging

Sometimes I work too hard to find a novel.

I believe good fiction should be effortless. You start at page one, maybe it takes a bit to get rolling, but once you're in the story -- living, breathing and in love with the characters -- the book will unroll before you like the mythical red carpet that only unfolds for the chosen few.

I know these novels exist. I've read others like it. The problem is finding them.

Currently I'm jolting my way through The Pillars ofthe Earth by Ken Follett. This was a safe pick. Follett is a published novelist, many times over. He usually writes mystery/thrillers but he branched out into historical fiction with this work. It was also on Oprah's bookclub list.

I'm afraid it's 973 pages of crapola.

I have to push myself to read. I don't want to push myself. I want to slip in between the covers and slide around like butter. I want delicious prose, complex relationships, sing-song sentences that thrill my writer's soul. In short, I want magic.

Follett tries so hard to sound intelligent, but has choosen the 12th century to set this story. No one is intelligent. For example, Tom, a central character, is a stone mason. In one chapter, he's discussing how his son and stepson fight all the time.

"Boys always fight. You could spend your whole life adjudicating their quarrels. Best to leave them to it."

I have been a professional writer for more than a decade and I had to look up adjudicating. I seriously doubt a barely-literate mason could pull that word out of his ass.

Unfortunately I have an obstinate nature. I'll push and pull my way through until the end. I'll bitch and bemoan my poor taste, my willingness to accept recommendations from a half-reliable source. But finish I will.

Next on my list, No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, recently adapted for film by the Coen brothers. I have high hopes.

Until then, I sneak paragraphs from some of my favorite novels as balm.

"The rest of the time she was both coquettish and coy, incredibly clever at parrying an attack, contriving never to lay herself open either to a word or gesture, or even a look which would allow the victor to coincide with the vanquished or give O to believe that it was all that simple to take possession of her mouth."