who finishes what books and my personal albatross

[Paul L. Maliszewski]

On Tue, 17 Oct 1995, jeff severs wrote:

	Any speculation as to what such a study for _GR_ might turn up? Does
	everyone out there have their 100-pages-in, their lost "in the
	zone", and their finished friends? Or do my friends just suffer
	from acedia? 

I remember hearing about that study in TIME; however, I think it was more
recent because it included numbers for Vineland.  Or was at least
definitely conducted in 1990.  If I remember right, Vineland and
Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera had the two poorest showings
for works of fiction on the bestseller list that actually get completed. 
The conclusions to be drawn from this seem like the obvious conclusions. 

My personal albatross is The Last Temptation of Christ.  For five years
running I'd start that book and then put it down, always within a week or
two of Easter.  I've now lost track of how many times total I've given it
a shot.

Paul