Very Slow Reads

I read Mark Helprin's extraordinary novel, Winter's Tale, around a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The enjoyment was increased by the fact that I'd tried reading the book when it was first published. At that time, the story just didn't work for me. On my second try, however, I did something very different: I read it very slowly. Not just slowly, but very slowly.

You can't speed-read Helprin, Faulkner, Trollope, Dickens, and many other writers. It is crazy even to try. Doing so destroys the poetry of the prose. The author and the work are done an injustice. The soothing appreciation of the word is lost.

I'm still working on Proust. Marvelous stuff.