The Most Unread Book Ever Acclaimed
September 19, 2018 8:42 PM   Subscribe

The online reader reviews I found varied between naked revulsion and sheepish endorsement. One Amazon reviewer claimed he had given a copy of the 1198-page novel to each of his friends and promised that if they finished, he would pay for their children’s college education. “I’ve paid for no one’s education!” he wrote.
posted by Chrysostom (33 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
I spent a period of my life approaching novels such as this and movies such as this with a bit of relish, like I might learn something out of sheer endurance and willpower. And I think I might have been right a few times.

More times than not, I came away feeling like I'd made a lot of effort and commitment and had gotten nothing out of it.

I make different choices these days.

(The most recent counter-example to this is Pynchon's Against The Day, which I attempted to read 4 times in print and failed and finally managed to listen to the entire 50+ hour audiobook of, and I was super glad I did. It has ruined me for audiobooks for the past several years, but the end result of the experience of that novel was a feeling of completeness, not a feeling of alienation. I can't describe it any better than that. I've been tempted to pick the print novel up again since then, and I might someday.)
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM on September 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


I abandoned both Mason & Dixon and Against the Day. Maybe will try again. Made it through 2666 though.
posted by thelonius at 9:00 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I thought M&D was just pure fun. ATD was work, but the audiobook really carried me through.
posted by hippybear at 9:09 PM on September 19, 2018


Anyway, I've never heard of the book in this article before, which means it's well beyond my league. But I'm glad to have read this. Thanks for posting!
posted by hippybear at 9:11 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I’ll bite. I read Kristin Lavransdatter every year. I survived The Golden Notebook. I like quantity in a novel. I like doorstops.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:14 PM on September 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


I couldn't even get through the linked review's quotes from it.
posted by orange swan at 9:15 PM on September 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


I still haven't made it far into that Alan Moore doorstop. I might try again.
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on September 19, 2018


NB to people who are me: Marguerite Young is not the same person as Marguerite Yourcenar, who wrote Memoirs of Hadrian.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:24 PM on September 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Thank you for this. It dovetails with my fantasy of writing a FPP that receives neither comment nor favorite.
posted by standardasparagus at 9:45 PM on September 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


Oh, I have a few that are SO CLOSE! 1 fave, 4 comments, down in that range. Many of my contenders were deleted, but just enough were legit posts that I feel like I could get there at some point.
posted by hippybear at 9:59 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


That Paris Review article is great! Makes me wonder if she had been a male writer, would she have been so dismissed. I doubt it. I did think the reviewer's comment about her being dismissed because of being a Midwestern writer seemed likely too. I almost want to read her novel except it sounds a bit too experimental for me. I can do experimental for 190 pages, not 1900. But then again last year I read two 800+ page novels for fun, one of which could be described as mildly experimental, so.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:03 PM on September 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here's my 1 fave, 2 comment post, "I'm Clark Weber, with another Senior Moment"

posted by hippybear at 10:05 PM on September 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


How have I never heard of this book? It sounds awesome!

Also, essayist, elephants browsing the banks of the Wabash would have been a seasonal sight based on routes of touring circuses, some of which I gawped at in amaze in parking lots in Lafayette, Indiana, a town on the Wabash that has had train service - and circuses featuring elephants - from the Civil War era until circus elephants became a thing of the past, like, last year maybe?
posted by mwhybark at 10:06 PM on September 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


(i love long, undisciplined, impenetrable books. I have read every published word Pynchon has ever been credited with, many of those words several times, as for example when they are assembled to form Gravity's Rainbow.

My favorite swollen opus, though, is Delany's Dahlgren, which I reread annually for a decade thirty years past.

I also grew up in Indiana and obtained a college degree at IU Bloomington over study covering the late 80s and early 90s. I took as little English and literature as possible, understanding the academic expression of these disciplines to be hostile to SF&F, which I still take to be a wise and accurate choice. My primary academic interest was art, and that meant that I gained a passing familiarity with modernist lit from about after ww1 to the time of my graduation.

which is why it's puzzling that this work wasn't just not taught, it wasn't even mentioned. A sprawling modernist novel set in not just Indiana but southern Indiana, where the author apparently worked as an instructor over a period of years - this is, at a minimum, an abrogation of scholastic standards.

The work appears to have been published in 1979. I sure hope I served the author a cup of coffee, or if she preferred, tea, at the Runcible Spoon a few years later. I am damn sure gonna read this fucking book.)
posted by mwhybark at 10:29 PM on September 19, 2018 [18 favorites]


Delaney... interesting. I've never considered any of his works to be swollen. But it's been decades since I've read anything of his that isn't Stars In My Pocket.... because that is The Best Book Ever. And should be re-read often.
posted by hippybear at 10:34 PM on September 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I went down the rabbit hole that is Goodreads reviews of Miss Macintosh, My Darling, and was reminded that in Anne Tyler's novel The Accidental Tourist, when the main character wants to avoid talking to people on airplanes, he takes out a copy of MMMD:

The name of his book was Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, and it was 1,198 pages long … It had the advantage of being plotless, as far as he could tell, but invariably interesting, so he could dip into it at random.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:08 AM on September 20, 2018 [10 favorites]


Oh my, that book sounds like I should read! Thanks for the post!
posted by gusottertrout at 12:18 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh wow! How have I never heard of this! It definitely goes on my to-read list. The excerpts in the article were wonderful.
posted by Kattullus at 1:04 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Great tip, thanks! I'm a sucker for a proper doorstopper (The Magic Mountain, The Man without Qualities, Middlemarch, Infinite Jest are some of my favs) and I've long been disappointed that it's so hard to find a certain sort of tome written by a woman (I love Middlemarch, but it doesn't quite fall in that category; there's a decent amount of sufficiently easy to follow plot after all). Not surprised though. The sheer gall it takes! It's easy to see how a man might think he could get away with it, but a woman? I've never heard of this writer before, but she's got my attention now.

Because I do love that sort of gall. To start such a journey, without any promise where it might be going, that it might be going anywhere at all, what testament to trust in your reader's patience and curiosity! I mean, your standard fantasy series also racks up a fair number of pages, and I enjoy those as well, but that's not what I'm talking about here. These are often page-turners; they make the time pass faster, and often that's what I want. But here, we're talking about books that make the time pass more slowly; they make it work differently at any rate; they distort time and space by creating their own gravitational pull. Maybe it's Stockholme Syndrome, sunk cost fallacy - fine; but I find it increasingly hard to really get lost in novel nowadays, and if that's what it takes...

I'm not always up for it, of course. I do have to be in a certain place in my life. Finishing high school, finishing a degree, quitting a job, leaving a city, moving back home. Endings, transitions. I don't know where I'm going either, so why should the novel? Does one always have to have a goal in sight? And why rush? My life tends to be slow, but sometimes it's still faster than I am; sometimes I need these extra pockets of time before I can move on.

Maybe I should revive that shredded dissertation or write a novel or something, and read this book instead of finishing it. (It only works if manage to get in visible distance of the finishing line though, so unlikely).

At any rate, I suggest we all pretend we read it, and start proselytizing about it at parties when someone brings up Infinite Jest.
posted by sohalt at 2:53 AM on September 20, 2018 [10 favorites]


I’ve had this on a list of books I’m thinking about reading, but as there are 380 other books on the list it probably will be awhile until I get around to it.
posted by LeLiLo at 3:22 AM on September 20, 2018


This review sells the hell out of this book. I think I might have to read it. I've recently been obsessed with Joanna Russ (a contemporary of Samuel Delaney), whose work also hits on the surreal vibe summed up by this bit from the review: When I explained this character to my husband, he asked whether this was supposed to be metaphorical. I tried several times to answer before realizing that the question itself was irrelevant.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:39 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


I feel a proper review should be at least 20 pages long, to test the reader’s mettle.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:57 AM on September 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


So, it's a sort of Infinite Jest, only without the testosteronal lit-bro gravitas?
posted by acb at 4:18 AM on September 20, 2018


I'd never heard of this either: many thanks for the post, Chrysostom. At the wikipedia page about the novel there's there a wonderful (albeit frustratingly small) photograph of Young embracing the manuscript/typescript.
posted by misteraitch at 6:21 AM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm pleased as punch to see this and proud to be metafilter's OG Marguerite Young stan. A prof of mine was deeply into Young and she passed her on to me.

She lived such a weird and unexciting exciting life, it's a shame that AFAIK, there isn't a good biography of her. She had an affair with Allen Tate, he of the extremely big head. Her papers are at Yale.

In the mid '70s, Charles Ruas produced a year-long on-air reading of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling for WBAI. You can listen to it here! (Here Leo Lerman, the diarist, editor, and model for Mr. Spitzer, the lawyer and composer of music no one can hear, reads Chapter 25.) Also, her Paris Review interview with Charles Ruas—
She lives on a quiet tree-lined street in Greenwich Village. The walls of her apartment are painted red and lined with book cases. On one shelf, the room is replicated in miniature sofas and miniature chairs set on easy rugs and lit by tiny lamps and chandeliers. The room in which we sat was dominated by a merry-go-round horse with ribbons streaming free from the pole that reached the ceiling. A life-sized antique doll was seated in a Victorian chair, exquisitely dressed in lace. Miss Young placed an ashtray within easy reach. She smoked continuously. Her voice has a Midwestern flavor, sometimes drawling, sometimes rapid.
is here.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:01 AM on September 20, 2018 [9 favorites]


The opening of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum struck me this way, as if the narrator had been swallowed by his own narrative. Then I got to chapter two and understood that was the entire point: how did this young man come to be hiding out in a museum after hours stalking a sinister cult bent on world conquest? Foucault's Pendulum is only book I finished and then immediately began re-reading, just to understand how Eco was drawing his protagonist (and the reader) into this madness.
posted by SPrintF at 8:04 AM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


sohalt: "At any rate, I suggest we all pretend we read it, and start proselytizing about it at parties when someone brings up Infinite Jest."

I look forward to the Fanfare post.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:29 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


We have this in my library, surprisingly. Apparently it was reprinted in '79, in two volumes. I'm going to look at it. I like some of the excerpts in the article, kind of reminds me of a long winded Richard Brautigan. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time, currently, getting through anything.
posted by evilDoug at 10:10 AM on September 20, 2018


There doesn't seem to be an ebook version, which is too bad, because it strikes me as the kind of thing I'd enjoy reading, but I can barely tolerate reading print anymore. (Paper books take two hands. And you can't read them while you eat. And the light keeps shifting.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:19 PM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wow. That was a particularly nifty review. I don’t think I’ll get around to Young’s novel, but I’m definitely going to check out O’Gieblyn’s other writings. Thanks for the post.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:50 PM on September 20, 2018


I’m so glad to hear of other fans of giant novels! I’ll have to find s copy, it looks right up my alley. It’ll have to wait though, because I just started a 1000 page novel a few days ago.., and apparently my back is no longer cool with me carrying a 1000 page hardcover to and from work on public transit...
posted by Valancy Rachel at 8:50 PM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Four quick things:

1) I am a sucker for the door stopper; I have great affection for books with heft- none of the numerous doors in my house lack for ample stoppage;

2) Book Depository has volume 2 for sale, Volume 1 sold out. I just get the feeling I am too late to this conversation;

3) that this book has to be split into two parts speaks so excitingly of its heft I now just have to go out and get it even go to an actual physical walk up bookshop with human attendants; and

4) I am not just a sucker for the door stopper- I closed the back cover on Moore's Jerusalem, after months of disappointment, to realise that perhaps I had just been made a sucker full stop.
posted by Plutocratte at 10:42 PM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


You read and you read and you read and you read and the door opens and you keep reading and the door opens and you read and you read and the door is there and you continue to read and you never notice the door.

If you stop the door, you can't get through it and we're all here waiting

still
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 10:07 PM on September 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


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