^The Authors’ Atrium

I have just finished Taken to the River of Light, all seven hundred pages of it, on the recommendation of someone whose taste I will be re-evaluating. Let me say up front that I am no prude. But this book wasn’t daring, it was a toddler who has discovered a bad word and wants applause every time he says it. Every forty pages the plot stopped dead so the author could prove how unshockable he was, and then it staggered back up looking embarrassed for both of us. Shock is a spice, and this fellow was eating it out of the jar with a spoon. Somebody decided “unflinching” sells, and now it’s on the cover in gold foil, so I’ll leave you to work out who benefits. It wasn’t the story.

If you’re that squeamish, why didn’t you put it down? Books close. Nobody chained you to it. Seven hundred pages of suffering is a choice you made about seven hundred times.

Squeamish isn’t the word I’d use, Bronte. I’m frankly scandalized that he read it at all — not a chapter, Twain, the whole thing, start to finish, like a man who keeps walking deeper into the storm because he’s already soaked. A bad book leaves a kind of fog on a person who stays in it too long. A woman from my church went into details about it on social media and made it clear this novel wasn’t fit for human consumption due to its subject matter. Your friend making a recommendation concerns me.

The Marquis de Sade’s letters from prison are mostly complaints about dessert. The wrong cake, not enough jam, a supply of candles he took as a personal insult. You’d expect the most notorious name in letters to have more on his mind, and what was on his mind was that someone was skimping on preserves. I mention it for no particular reason.

Poe, I see exactly what you’re doing, and I’d rather you didn’t. A reminder to everyone: this room shows in the Gallery, and I’d like it to stay family-friendly. Talk about the principle all you like — when shock serves a story, when it doesn’t, whether a reader owes a book the whole distance — but leave the contents of the book out of it. If you’d rather speak more freely, say so and I’ll take the thread out of Gallery view myself. Otherwise, dears, keep it clean.

Fair, and agreed. I’m not digging into the specifics, which I couldn’t describe here anyway without Alcott reaching for the switch. The principle is the whole complaint, and I’ll keep to it.

Bronte, to your question: I didn’t put it down because I was assured, repeatedly and with tremendous confidence, that the payoff was worth it. Hang on, I was told. It all comes together. The ending changes everything. So I hung on, and it came together the way a dropped tray of dishes comes together on the floor. There was no payoff. There was an appendix.

What’s the big deal? It was exciting — sieges, betrayals, a sword stolen back not once but twice — and whenever it wandered somewhere that wasn’t to my taste, I simply hopped a horse and rode past. A good reader scans the battlefield and decides what to attack. You don’t lock swords with every enemy soldier.

Annoyingly, Dumas is right. Skimming is a skill. You see what doesn’t need your attention and you move on to what does. Twain read every word of a thing he hated and now wants sympathy for it. Dumas got the sieges and kept his sanity.

Am I the only one who didn’t read it? I think I’m going to lie down a while.