Why I Stopped Reading Mailer

Because I wasn't reading him in the right way. I would get on a flight and be more interested in slobbering on my headrest than in propping my copy of The Naked and the Dead up on the mini-table usually reserved for plastic cups and uneaten peanuts. I'd get on the Metro and only go a few stops before I'd need to transfer. I'd get home and, missing my friends, would go visit them rather than holing up like a hermit with my book. It wasn't that I didn't have the time to read, but that I didn't have all that time consecutively. Which The Naked and the Dead demands. It's a book with no real main character, but a motley crew of soldiers in a WWII platoon. Like any fictional work on the war, they all have nicknames and distinguishing characteristics, to be sure, but I consistently found myself trying to jog my memory as to which Southern soldier was in profile at this particular moment and what was his relationship with the others.

Thus, I've moved on to Lolita, a book that no matter when I open it I am quickly reminded by the author that it's about a pedophile. That's refreshing.