Being Halfway Through a Novel

Usually, my problem is getting started.  I will find sixteen ways from Sunday (what, exactly, does that mean, anyway?) to avoid rewarding myself with the luxury of reading a novel.  If I'm on a beach or on a plane, there's no problem.  But being here at home?  There is always that to-do list, which never includes "Start reading a novel."  Or its distant cousin, "Start writing a novel."  There's always something that needs to be cleaned or weeded or cooked or refinished or sewn or sorted or stared at.  So I deny myself.

But if I actually do get started, say, on a plane, then there's a good chance that I will continue.  To be truthful, there have been novels that I've abandoned after a couple of chapters.  But getting halfway through?  I can think of only one time that I gave up enough hours of my life on earth to get halfway through a novel to then say, "Dammit!  I hate this novel!" and to toss it aside, never to be revisited.  That novel was A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  It's pretty much a love-it-or-hate-it novel.  It was published eleven years after Toole committed suicide, due to his mother's relentless determination to get Walker Percy to help her get it published.  And damn, if it didn't win a Pulitzer in 1981, an event which forever soured me to the respectability of the Pulitzer Prize.  I gave it all the time I could, back in the 70s, but eventually, all that farting and belching got to me, and I gave up.

I have encountered people since then who claim to have loved the book.  And these are people I respect, so I am left wondering if perhaps I was too young?  too prudish?  too inexperienced to appreciate the work?  But my wondering is not enough to get me to try again.  I am so over it.

Today, I am in love with that wondrous place halfway through a novel.  I am engaged, I am eager, I am committed to completing the mission.  Tomorrow's forecast is for 100% chance of rain, heavy at times, so guess what I will be doing?  (I will deliberately not allow myself to read any more tonight, just so that I have it to look forward to during tomorrow's rain.)  It's going to be a lovely day.