“Whether you are the reader or the writer, it can be extremely hard to start a novel. No one in the book is your friend yet, and all the places are strange; hence, starting to read feels like a forced act of intimacy.”
--Stephen King
There’s a news story from a few years back that I have never been able to get out of my mind. I probably have the details wrong but on the salient point I’m certain. The story was about a woman who went hiking in a snowy region and broke her leg. She knew she’d be unable to hike out but made a shelter with her tent, rationed her food, and was able to drag herself to a nearby stream for fresh water. After—I think—a few weeks of this with things looking very grim, she was discovered by a pair of brothers hiking in the area. Realizing they had to immediately undertake the hike they’d just finished to get help, the brothers took a rest of a few hours, and began the trek back. They left the woman food, water, a blanket, and—and this is the important point for my purposes—a Michael Connelly paperback.
Obviously, these guys are heroes. And just as obviously, out of the things they left her, the Michael Connelly paperback, is the one expendable item. But, to me, who can’t go four stops on a subway train without something to read, nothing makes them heroes more than giving her that book. You can argue that there was a practical side to leaving the paperback. It potentially kept the woman from worrying that something might happen to her rescuers before they could return. And a crime novel is the type of book to keep you alert and keep you going because even in a bad mystery—and Connelly doesn’t write bad mysteries—a reader wants to find out what happens.
And then there’s one of the purposes of literature we don’t discuss, companionship. Donna Tartt (who belongs to the tradition of popular writers who write long, involving novels while often receiving only grudging critical praise—if that*) understands this as well any anyone. “The first duty of the novelist is to entertain,” she has said. “It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.” Anything those brothers left would have been a mercy. But imagine how that woman would have felt if they said, “We’ll be back with help. In the meantime, here’s The Kreutzer Sonata.”
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