Ducks, Newburyport and the joy of long books
In books (and films and TV) length is often considered an indicator of quality. There’s this idea that the writer or director has so many revolutionary ideas, so many serious, important things to say, that they can’t be contained in the usual amount of time. So the hour-long season finale becomes 80 minutes, the two hour movie become three, the 400 page novel doubles in size.
These epics, these behemoths, these very important works often end up disappointing. Very few of my favourite movies are more than average length, and few TV series end as soon as they really should. (There are exceptions of course — I love Bollywood movies, for which three hours is often a minimum, even if I have to watch them over 2 nights nowadays).
Books seem to have fewer of these exceptions though. Whenever I’ve approached a classic but lengthy novel, it hasn’t worked out well for me. I gave up on Gravity’s Rainbow probably less than 10% of the way through knowing I was never going to finish it. I did finish Roberto Bolano’s 2666, but can’t say I enjoyed the experience that much. War and Peace and Infinite Jest are among the many ‘bucket list’ books I’ve never attempted.
Part of the problem is in the way I read, or used to. I only ever had one book on the go at a time, so when I was in the middle of one that I wasn’t enjoying that much, I would get frustrated, because it was keeping me from a better book, and especially so if it was going to take a long time to finish. This was exacerbated once I had kids, as I suddenly had much less time to read. I started to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s ‘Team of Rivals’ when my wife was barely pregnant with our second child and didn’t finish it until after he was born. An excellent book, but after that long I was desperate for something else.
Even with good books, I often found myself rushing through them as I was so excited to get to the next one. Something had to change. I taught myself to savour books more, helped by learning to appreciate poetry for the first time, T.S Eliot in particular, mainly thanks to my wife’s influence. If you find yourself rushing through a poetry book, you really are missing the point, but learning to savour each sentence helps when reading longer form writing too. Secondly, I belatedly realised that I could have multiple books on the go at one time. If reading a particularly dense non-fiction book I would take a break with a zippy thriller, or I might have a book of short stories and a novel on the go at once.
I was still wary of longer novels though until along came Ducks, Newburyport. I don’t know quite why it appealed to me, a thousand page long steam of consciousness novel being the type of book I would usually be desperate to avoid. Something about it caught my attention when I first read of it’s Booker Prize nomination though, and then again when I first saw it in a store. It took until last year to actually get round to buying it though, and even when I did I was slightly intimidated and took a while to get round to starting it.
As soon as I did though, I was hooked. I knew this was a book for me, a book to savour and live with for a long time. Rather than rush through it I would read a handful of pages at a time, perhaps occasionally a block of 20 to 30 pages as a treat. Time spent with this novel, with these characters, was an absolute joy. Rarely has a book said so much to me about our world, made me think profoundly about society, whilst also making me laugh out loud (and I do mean genuinely laughing out loud, not just the occasional wry smile that a typical literary novel might provoke).
The stream of consciousness style that I thought I might struggle with was the only way this story could work, and the length never felt like an attempt to impress through quantity, it was just the length this story needed to be. I was glad it was so long in fact, because it meant I got to enjoy it for longer. Having started the book in January, I didn’t finish until June, having read a handful of other books simultaneously, and the experience had moved me so much I was almost tempted to start all over again.
Finishing the book has left me slightly bereft, not quite knowing what to read next. It’s no coincidence that I moved onto two very different books, a collection of Borges short stories and a non-fiction history book, as I knew no other novel could compete, in the short term at least. In a lifetime of reading, I struggle to think of another book I have enjoyed as much. Part of me wants to shout from the rooftops about this book, part of me doesn’t want the world to know, or care what they think.
One thing is for sure, I won’t be afraid to tackle long books in the future, as this one has bought me such joy. The fact that they are unlikely to match Ducks, Newburyport is neither here not there.
