Self-Inflicted Literary Torture

I remember being back in college and hearing all these stories surrounding the James Joyce tome "Ulysses."

"Beware," they said, "beware this book."

It was always billed as the unreadable book. A masterpiece that existed more in a fantastical, collective awe than in any sort of reality. Why not reality? Because everyone just talked about how amazing it was but I never actually met anyone who read it. The thing they all said was how they started it but could never get through it. How they'd trudge through 100, 300, 500 pages and then just run out of breath. Some people had started it and stopped and restarted it up to 4, 5 times. This was the book that would bring grown men to tears. I'm not saying that grown men, particularly, have a harder time crying than others. Really, it's just an expression. I think you know what I mean.

So "Ulysses" has always been this "thing" for me, this book that I might just, possibly, pick up one day and challenge myself to get through because it's more about saying that I did it than actually wanting to read it. I mean, it doesn't actually sound all that good (the plot, that is), and I'm not a particularly big fan of Joyce (I read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in school and thought it kinda sucked). So for me it would be more about a personal challenge that wouldn't necessarily have much literary or intellectual value (particularly if the book ends up being a boring, rambling mess, and I forget its content as soon as I set it down, as has happened with plenty of other "classics" I've been encouraged to read). I kind of think of it in the same way I think about keeping Passover - it's more about the experience of seeing if I can stick to the whole no bread or pasta thing for the whole stretch than gaining any sort of particular cultural or spiritual value from it. Yeah, I like the seder meals and the food and the community part, but the act itself, the actual "fasting" doesn't really do it for me other than to make me feel cool that I stared carbs in the face and totally dissed them.

Which brings me to my other point, or rather, to the whole reason I brought up "Ulysses" - the book I'm reading now. If I pick up a book and get at least 100 pages in, I have to finish it, no matter how shitty it is. The only book that has ever stumped me was "The Gulag Archipelago" which is my own personal "Ulysses," which is to say I've started it and not finished it at least 3 times, each time getting to page 400 or so. And with that, it's not that it's bad; rather, it's just very dense and hard to read day in and day out until you get through the whole thing. I started it when I went to Cancun in March 2004 and I can still see the Bulldog Cafe flyer I used as a placeholder while I was trying to read through it on the beach. Sad.

Right now I'm on page 423 of "The Brothers Karamazov." Holy crap. That thing is a monster and it's not at all enjoyable or even good in a "this is good literature" sort of way. It's just not. I'm sorry. I know it's like one of the greatest works of man, but I don't know what the big deal is. And still, I just know I have to finish it. It's been a month, continuing from when I started it 2 years ago, and I'm like 300 pages away from being done. I'm totally not enjoying the experience and I kind of wish I knew how to quit it.