Failures: Sunday Salon

Not every book I start do I enjoy or value, but those are much fewer in number which I fail to finish.  I used to hold strong opinions about this, feeling that one owed a duty to the author to finish, but now I feel that life is too short. If the author has failed in his duty of keeping the reader amused or informed or otherwise engaged, the reader must be free to move on!

On my recent holiday, although I read a great deal of wonderful stuff, two books fell into this category – Hope Muntz’ The Golden Warrior and  James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans.  The Muntz I brought back with me (it was a library book), but the Mohicans were left in the South Seas!  I just could not develop any interest in Fenimore Cooper's cardboard characters and stultifying prose - though I now understand Stalky's reference to the "giddy Chingangook"!.

I came across Hope Muntz' book in Slightly Foxed, where it got a rave review from Jon Stallworthy, and has the impeccable academic credential of being introduced by the late great G M Trevelyan; and she was clearly a serious historian in her own right.  The Golden Warrior covers, over 20 years or more, the relationship between Harold Godwinson and William the Bastard, whose fateful meeting at Hastings ("Santlache fight") in 1066 had such an impact on the history of England in particular, but also on what we now call France.  It was a truly epic moment, and was the culmination of decades of politics, religion, and military struggle.  And the novel is comprehensive and accurate - but is entirely without any spark or excitement, weighted down by detail and obscurity.

Tellingly, it was published in 1948, when Britain had just escaped invasion (again).  It is a worthy, mighty achievement, but it is a dead thing.  Stallworthy is much excited by Muntz' avoidance of words with a Greek or Latin root, painting, as he puts it, "only from a Saxon palette".  This is a ridiculous idea - why should a twentieth century novelist deny herself the full range of words available - particularly as her story is set much in Normandy and among Churchmen who might, perchance, have been using early French and Latin!?  There was a long tradition that Harold escaped alive from Hastings, and to clean my palette after this book, I shall re-read Kipling's marvellous story on the subject soon - The Tree of Justice, in Rewards and Fairies.

Comments

[Harriet]

Perhaps you should try Sarah Bowers' The Needle in the Blood, which deals with the same historical period but is certainly a good deal livelier than Muntz sounds to be. Lots of people were raving about it -- I quite liked it but didn't rave by any means. I have also overcome my guilt about not finishing books!

[Audrey]

I've been thinking about the same thing...but it sounds like you're finding a lot of interesting books to start, if not necessarily finish!

[Ann (Table Talk)]

I stopped beating myself around the head over finishing books when I caught myself out in a set of double standards. As a primary teacher I never made a child finish a book that they could explain why they weren't enjoying. What more likely way to put children off reading forever? And yet I forced myself to finish books even when I knew precisely why they weren't worth any more of my time. Now I'm much kinder, to me if not to the writer.