One of the pleasures for me in Emma Adler’s “Every novel is boring - until it isn’t” (at Public Books) is how contrary it seems to my own experience. Adler writes of the “volta” in a novel, a turn that, unlike the sonnet’s, is much more subjective and experiential, “a shift to visceral enjoyment” after the lulls of bored anticipation. It’s a smart essay, and a fun one. But surely also wrong! Oftentimes it’s the order and elegance and promise of an opening chapter, or opening sentence that engages me. Muriel Spark! “Daylight was appearing over London, the great city of bachelors.” And then, eventually, the realisation (or the inability to keep half-acknowledged) that I am reading “in anticipation of retrospection” sets in, and with it kinds of boredom or lagging attention. Even the best novels (like life) promise more than they can fully deliver. And every ending (again like life) is difficult because it brings to a close what, if we’ve been made a part of its reality, is the experience of the novel.
