As an avid reader, I try to make it a habit not to give up on a book. After all, some books are slow going at the start, only to gradually pick up momentum along the way and grow into a richly rewarding experience. I try to adhere to what I call "the 100-page" rule. If I read for 100 pages or more and nothing interesting happens, it's pretty much a given that nothing interesting is going to happen. There have been some exceptions to this rule, such as Stephen King's uncut edition of The Stand which had me going for about half of its 1000+ pages, before I finally got overwhelmed by all of the endless characters and subplots and just straight-up quit. Every now and then, a book will compel me to read it from cover to cover, despite the fact that it's not really interesting me, just so I can say that I've read it.
Last week, I finished Ursula K. LeGuin's sci-fi magnum opus, The Dispossessed. 385 tedious and unrewarding pages later, I'm not sure why I did.
This may well be the most boring science fiction book every written, and one of the most boring books ever published in any genre. We follow our hero, the anarchist Shevek from birth to roughly age 40 as he attempts to broker peace between the poverty-stricken socialist government of the planet Annares and the wealthy, capitalistic society of the planet Urras. Along the way, he does a lot of exciting things like devise a complex mathematical theory, write a lot of papers, and talk endlessly about physics and political philosophy. (I know! Riveting, right?) And dear God, do LeGuin's characters love to talk. They go on and on, bloviating for paragraphs on end about religion and politics. (A warning to readers: any novel that is almost 400 pages long but has only 13 chapters is a big red flag.) There is an interesting moment toward the end of the novel where Shevek joins an uprising of labor workers on Urras that is violently suppressed by the government, but LeGuin, perhaps fearing her readers would get too much excitement out of this story, quickly steers the ship back to Boringville.
And after all this, what important lesson has Shevek the brilliant mathematician and anarchist learned? That both socialist and capitalist systems are inherently flawed! Wow. Thanks for that brilliant bit of insight. It's nothing I haven't heard from any undergrad poly-sci major between hits from a bong and repeated listenings of Bob Marley's Legend.
I'm not trying to be mean. I wanted to like this book. I really did. I want to like the recently-deceased Ms. LeGuin, who seemed like a fairly cool, ass-kicking feminist writer. Maybe her other books are worth checking out, but I'm not in a rush to check any of them out anytime soon. Perhaps the problem is with me. I just don't care enough about physics or mathematics to want to read a novel about them. Maybe when I crack open a sci-fi novel, I expect an exciting story and exciting characters, not a pseudo-profound political screed puffed up with balloon juice. Perhaps this type of book is not for me. Perhaps, like a bad relationship, it's OK to cut your losses early on instead of feeling like you've just wasted your time.
"But, Eric," you think, "I saw on your Facebook page that you quoted a line from this book." Well, yes, that's true. I did like that line, and felt it had significance in the dangerous times we're currently living in. I liked some of the dialogue and writing, but the entire book, as a whole, just didn't do it for me. And if that upsets you, let me quote another great line from a beloved "classic" that I can't stand:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
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