Daniel Martin Thwarts A Score Of Lawyers

The first third of the calendar year ended on April 30, and in that period I managed to read four books. Yep, four whole books!  Man, I was so proud of myself, I was struttin' around here like a peacock.  As Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "pleased as punch."  Then recently I overheard Momma Cuandito tell someone that while we were in Mexico for a week, she read three books.  Three books in one week?  That seems physically impossible to me, until I stop and think about it.  Momma Cuan can read anything at any time, even with music, the TV or the radio on in the same room.  She has the ability to tune things out and focus.  I, on the other hand, need almost total quiet.  I can't concentrate on what I'm attempting to read if I'm in close proximity to any noise-emitting device whatsoever.  The one exception is random white noise, which I have used on occasion off my phone app in our living room to block out the television audio coming from the family room.

In light of the foregoing, I am wondering if I should start a Slow Readers Book Club.  It would be for people like me who, you know, take a whole month to read a 350 page book.  Other potential members would have to promise to be tolerant of the slow pokes. I do, however, have reservations about my initiating such an undertaking, because my extremely limited experience with book clubs has been hit and miss.

Throughout the sixty-one years of my reading life, I have only been in two book clubs.  One of them didn't end well; the other never quite got off the ground.  The first was the Norwest Law Department Book Club. I know that's kind of a long and clumsy name, but we were a group of attorneys.  What did you expect?  In retrospect, maybe a name like The Barristers' Book Club would have been flashier or cooler, but we weren't big on style points.

The NLDBC actually got off to a fairly promising start.  There were a number of voracious readers who had favorite authors and great recommendations.  We met in Conference Room E on the seventeenth floor of the Norwest Center (nka, the Wells Fargo Tower).  Twenty-four people could sit around the mammoth marble table, plus there were a dozen or so extra chairs ("bleacher seats") along two of the walls.  We hardly ever had to make use of the bleachers, but at least they were there if we needed them.  The picture windows looked out on the northeast section of downtown Minneapolis, with the  Mississippi River beyond.  That view came in handy if you got tired of someone prattling about all that was wrong with the book selection. The view out the window was a ready-made distraction.

Most of the books we read were worthy selections.  Some of them were Independence Day by Richard Ford, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, and Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather.  The honor of selecting each book was passed around, mostly randomly, among the ten sections of the Law Department (Litigation, Trusts, Commercial, Depository, etc.), and the individual selector would send around an e-mail to promote her pick.  Some of those missives were more intriguing than others.  For example, one that I thought sounded particularly interesting was from Bob Lee, a lawyer in the Corporate Section who picked The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon by Jose Saramago.  Bob wrote, "It is the story of a lowly proof-reader for a large publishing house who, in a fit of whimsey, deletes the word 'not' in a new text book on the history of Portugal, and, as a result, causes political upheaval in Europe."

The NLDBC had a nice run -- albeit off and on -- for about two and a half years.  You might think nothing could be worse than a group of attorneys discussing the finer points of an obscure novel, but by and large the meetings were fun.  (Maybe because we carried on these sessions over lunch.)  Of course, not everything was ideal.   One of the regular attendees was my colleague "Leslie," who surely must have set a record for disliking every single selected book.  (Note: I am using quotation marks around some of the first names to protect the identity of the culprits.)  She even found fault with her own selection.  Then there was "Vicky," who regularly asked the selector/moderator for a meeting date postponement so she could finish, but then skipped the rescheduled confab anyway.  And finally we had the "Cynthia and Sherri Show," in which two litigation attorneys, who happened to be best friends, would enter into long dialogues with each other while the rest of us ingested our box lunches and contemplated the Mississippi.  Sometimes it was like eavesdropping on My Dinner With Andre.

Admittedly, those were minor quibbles.  We had a dandy time while it lasted, but you know the old adage about "all good things."  Toward the end of our run, attendance at each gathering started to drop.  People "forgot" to put it on their calendars.  Maybe some of the book offerings didn't sound all that appealing.  One could say that work got in the way; folks simply too busy with their jobs and off-the-clock family responsibilities to make room for leisure reading.  But what really killed the NLDBC was Daniel Martin, or more precisely, Daniel Martin.

After the NLDBC had been in existence past its second year anniversary, Daniel Martin, a novel I'd never heard of, was selected for the club's "enjoyment" by the General Counsel of Norwest (and subsequently Wells Fargo), Stan Stroup.  Upon hearing of Stan's selection, there were two main reasons I had high hopes for his choice, thinking maybe the club's rejuvenation was at hand.  First, I learned that the author of Daniel Martin was John Fowles, who also wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, a novel I had enjoyed reading in the early seventies.  (The story was turned into a fairly successful film in 1981.)  Secondly, Stan was the most brilliant lawyer I have ever known, and I figured this would translate into making a smart book selection for our group.  We needed a good pick because, as alluded to in the immediately preceding paragraph, attendance was down and some members felt we were on life support.  Was Daniel Martin the novel that would turn things around?

I was also confident the Daniel Martin gathering, several weeks hence, would be well attended and the discussion robust, for the simple reason that "The Boss," Stan, was in charge -- "large and in charge," to coin a phrase.  People would not dare to blow off this meeting, even if they hadn't bothered to read the last several club selections.  Plus, this would be a chance for the worker bees to impress the General Counsel with their astute observations and literary acumen!

Despite my initial optimism, my hopes plunged immediately when I picked up the novel off the B. Dalton shelf.  Seven hundred and four pages.  Bummer.  I was now faced with a dilemma.  Do I break my own longstanding 400 Page Rule, or do I stick to my principles?

[Note: In case you are not familiar with my 400 Page Rule, that means you are probably not familiar with my 100 Page Rule either.  Here is how I described them on May 12, 2009 in a post on ND Nation under my nom de plume, East of Midnight:

100 Page Rule: I never give up on a book before page 100. Once I get to that page, I decide whether to finish it. If I decide yes, then I read it to the end, no matter what. By the way, I regretted having to follow this rule when I decided to finish "Underworld" by Don DeLillo (the first chapter was the best part of the book), but most of the time I feel I have made the correct choice.

 

400 Page Rule: Perhaps this sounds nuts, but I never start a book which is over 400 pages unless (i) it has been strongly recommended to me by people I trust, or (ii) the author is one of my faves. There are just too many books less than 400 pages which I want to read but haven't started, so those get my attention first.] 

I reluctantly decided to plunge into Daniel Martin.  If anyone other than Stan had chosen that particular novel, I would have gladly sat out.  In hindsight, that would have been a wise choice.

Daniel Martin was a tedious, dreary and sleep-inducing story, replete with flashbacks, about a man who married the sister of his true love, and then finds himself in awkward situations partly as a result of that decision.  Maybe Fowles only had three good novels in him, The Collector and The Magus being the other two alongside The French Lieutenant's Woman.  (Even some great authors stop short of four; Harper Lee, whose To Kill A Mockingbird was her solo effort, readily comes to mind.)  There's a reason why Fowles' three earlier books were deemed worthy of a film interpretation, whereas Daniel Martin was not.

The book club members who, like me, were brave enough to read Stan's selection could not fire up during our meeting.  We felt like we'd just submitted a term paper, and dreaded the oral defense of our thesis.  The short gathering ended with a whimper.  For the first time I actually looked forward to getting back to my desk.  Stan might have been an outstanding attorney, but his salesmanship fell short.  Few, if any, of us left the room convinced by Stan that trudging through Daniel Martin was worth the effort.  The demise of the NLDBC followed shortly thereafter.  I have rarely strayed from my 400 Page Rule since.

I'm sure you are wondering about my adventures with the second book club to which I referred above, and those four books I read earlier this year.  Those exciting recollections will have to wait for another day.