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The Danger of the Long Read (or, The Worst Paragraph Ever Written)
🕑 Added 2024-08-26 14:00:15 +0000 UTCI'm finally doing it, y'all. I'm reading Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. The whole fucking thing. My copy is a little over 600 pages with some pretty small type.
I'm halfway through it, and I have to say: Not Bad. Well, like, incredible, but as a reading experience, it's got its ups and downs. First off, it's super readable. Short chapters, minus the 40-something-page digression where Ishmael talks about all the different kinds of whales there are. And for 173-year-old writing, pretty accessible. Lots of flourishes of great prose, but not at all dense like a Faulkner or Joyce or Stein sort of experience.
I bring this up, because I'm easily daunted by Long Form Entertainment. They're remounting GATZ here in New York City this fall. This is a famous production from about 15 years ago by the theater company Elevator Repair Service wherein they read (and act out) the entire text of The Great Gatsby. I missed it when it happend before, and I'd like to see it, but holy shit it's almost 9 hours long. Maybe not?
I didn't see Oppenheimer because, well, 3-plus hours? I need that shit assigned to me by a judge before I sit through that.
I used to not be like this. I loved a 900-page Stephen King joint. I would watch the most boring arthouse epics imaginable. I never even thought to check run-times of films. But these days, idk, maybe I'm pickier in my old age. Maybe I'm busier than I was in my 20s and early 30s. But I think there's something else at work. Let's call it "Mandoline Syndrome."
You ever used a mandoline? The kitchen device, not the stringed musical instrument. It's a very sharp horizontal blade on a flat surface. You take your vegetable like a cucumber or potato or whatever and you slide it back and forth and it makes very thin slices of that vegetable. That mandoline.
Well, I used to own a mandoline, and one night I got a little sloppy, a little too comfortable, and let's just say losing half a knuckle hurts like all get out. So much blood, and so much sharp, sharp, sharp pain.
These days, if I watch a cooking show, and someone pulls out a mandoline slicer, my body tenses up. I'm actually triggered by just seeing a mandoline in use. I, of course, got rid of my mandoline and haven't gone back since.
Let's bring all this back to Long Form Entertainment. In 2010, I read Edward Rutherford's epic historical fiction New York. 860 pages. I was undaunted. I like historical epics. Let's do this. And I did, and it was really good. Like not groundbreaking, but those 860 pages cooked. Loved the stories, loved the historical look at my favorite city. I thought, I'm gonna have to read more of this guy. A real modern-day James Michener, this fellow.
And then I got to the end. Which takes place present-day (mid 2000s for when the novel was written), and the main character of that era was just a guy romanticizing New York City. And okay, fine. We NYC-transplants have all done that. Sure. Great.
But he then gets obsessed with Strawberry Fields in Central Park, and with 1 WTC (which was originally pitched as "The Freedom Tower.") and he comes to this final (FINAL!) paragraph. After 860 pages this is what he landed on:
"Imagine. Freedom. Always."
Fuck off.
When I read that, I actually threw the book across the room.
I think this paragraph was my Mandoline accident of reading. I'm so reluctant to read a book longer than 350 pages, watch a movie over 2 hours, or even start a TV-show with more than 2 seasons.
I've read plenty of books with lackluster, even bad, endings. This isn't either. It's an offense. It suggests that Rutherford doesn't trust someone who'll read a 700+ page novel has any critical thinking skills.
"This is why people hate New Yorkers, Edward!" I shouted. And I share this with you only to say two things:
1) If you're a writer, don't do this.
2) Even when we're scared, we can overcome. Imagine. Reading. A Long Book.
Please don't spoil Moby Dick in the comments, btw. I don't know how it ends, though, I've got my fingers crossed that Queequeg and Stubb get married in the end.
-Jeffrey Cranor
Aug 26, 2024
Comments
Juliette Birkner
This is the best thing I've learned about all week. I've never read Moby Dick, and now kind of want to just read ; or the whale
devilsvine
Enjoy that extraordinary book and do see Gatz ... I saw it when it came to Sydney all those years ago and loved every damn minute. I also fear longform, especially theatre, and I've seen the novel-as-stupidly-long-play idea fail horribly - as it should, when you think about it - but you're in safe hands with this one.
Carolyn Kahn
I can sit down and fly though most long novels in a day or two. Case in point, I read IT over the space of three days with very few breaks and the same goes for the unabridged Les Miserables in French. This being said, I have a hard time sitting through a film that is longer than 90 minutes. I don't know why one is easier than the other for me.
Poe Villiers
If you stand at the right angle at the right spot on Times Square, it's actually spelled out in the skyline. Us Londoners should be so lucky.
Poe Villiers
I'm in an adjacent boat (ha) of making my way through War and Peace right now, after loving Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 and always being morbidly curious, and I'm making slow but enjoyable progress! I've also found it (or at least my translation) to be very accessible, although I find the trench warfare and military strategy I bit more of a slog than the juicy Russian High Society drama. I have a slightly warped idea of what a Long Film or Book is; the first film I can point to as having been a proper Favourite Film (after Disney's Robin Hood) was Casino Rpyale (2006) which clocks in at 2 hours 25, and then my teen angst film that was watched several times a month was, problematically, Lawrence of Arabia, clocking in at around 3 hours 43 mins. Length is handleable, but you're right in that it HAS to be worth it. I think many epic things do justify their length; when I first came out of Killers of the Flower Moon, one of the first thing that I told people was that I don't think there was a single thing that could have been removed to make that film any shorter, nor should there have been. It was as long as it needed to be. Many things should have Length Rights retracted if they piss you off, however. I think "Imagine. Freedom. Always." would be the end of it for me if I had been forced to read it.
mguin
I probably should have tried Melville instead of Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables. That writing was fairly short but *felt* long.
Eric Sowder
Harry Potter still some of the biggest books I’ve read . Reading James Rollins tides of fire now it’s about 600 pages
Sebastian C. Ravel
(I've had Moby Dick ruined for me twice by two toxic people who hated my pro-whale, anti-Ahab opinion of it. I won't go into details for sake of not spoiling. I hope you have a good time with it nonetheless!) I have an incredibly difficult time reading fiction these days, regardless of length, as I've also become a pickier reader as I've gotten older. (I, too, read almost every Stephen King book - and others - when I was younger.) (Hell, I read all of Les Miserables -- theatre kid.) And it's weird, because when fiction is good I love fiction! And I write fiction myself. But when it comes down to it, most of the books I own and read now are nonfiction. (Not exclusively, but for the most part I just buy fiction written by people whose writing I know I love.) They are well-loved and often-read, many quite long, but I find myself putting less pressure on myself in reading them as I do with fiction. And yet I watch plenty of fiction movies and shows, play fiction RPGs and videogames, act out fiction myself as a performer, and listen to fiction podcasts - like yours. Go figure. I wish I had a good reasoning here.
Marisa Grippo
I worked in a dorm cafeteria one summer in college, and they had these nifty “cut gloves” that were like little suits of armor for your hands, but still thin and flexible enough to wear underneath plastic food service gloves. When summer ended I stole one, and 10+ years later wearing that bad boy is still the only way I will even approach my mandoline.
Dan Coffey
This reminds me of the little bit of drama in the publishing world in the late oughts that resulted in "or; the whale": https://www.damionsearls.com/-or-the-whale
Julia Diem
But how else am I supposed to Imagine. Freedom. Always. if I'm not told to do it? That is too big a concept for my tiny, non-New Yorker brain to handle.
Tara Brown
I almost didn’t read this because of the length, but I did and I agree with every word. Spot on. Also, shout out to Stephen King epics. Let’s group read the whole Dark Tower series.
Doni Payne
I too had a mandolin accident. In my case as a 13 year old I sliced the top of my finger and into my fingernail. Fingers and especially fingernails sure do bleed a lot. I'm 36 now and still don't own a mandolin. But ya know, maybe I'll be brave. Maybe I'll buy a mandolin and have a little bit of horror in my kitchen.
