The User`s Guide to the 1,000-page Book

[Ya Sam]

SPEAKING VOLUMES

Nilanjana S Roy / New Delhi August 01, 2006



They should have a shelf apiece: the mammoth single-volume biography, A 
Suitable Boy, Infinite Jest, Dr Strange and Mr Norrell, now Sacred Games. 
Big books, none of them weighing under three kilograms.

“Buy me before good sense insists/ You’ll strain your purse and sprain your 
wrists,” Seth wrote in the Epigraph to A Suitable Boy, whose 1,349 pages 
make Vikram Chandra’s 900-page Sacred Games look like a modest little 
novella. So we do, and then we’re eyeing these baggy monsters, wondering 
where we go from here. Here’s how to alleviate the loneliness of the 
long-distance reader.

No pain, no gain: You wouldn’t run a marathon if all you’d been exercising 
was your thumbs on the TV remote. When the slab of dead tree matter that is 
Sacred Games arrived, I was prepared. For a practice routine of your own, 
warm up with Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend (a mere bagatelle at 555 
pages); advanced readers can move straight to Proust’s In Search of Lost 
Time. Don’t overstrain. Many years ago, in a fit of crazed over-confidence, 
I emerged triumphant from War and Peace and attempted to read all thirteen 
volumes of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage. Bad things happened. Terrible 
things. There’s only so far ordinary mortals can or should go, and I 
shuddered away from Pilgrimage, thinking, never again.

With a little help from your friends: Sacred Games is thoroughly enjoyable, 
and Chandra’s protagonists are gripping. Detective Sartaj Singh is still 
sharp, but he’s older and more cynical than when we met him first. Ganesh 
Gaitonde’s story starts out being the stereotypical rags-to-tax-free-riches 
gangster saga, but Gaitonde evolves, suffering depression, inflicting 
betrayal, reaching for philosophy or the fresh new virgin of day, according 
to need. But this is still a 900-page-long book, and your stamina might flag 
around the 400-page mark.

Spread the pain around. Reviewers often sadistically taunt fellow reviewers 
by speaking of the great anecdote on page 527 when you know that they’re 
stuck on the primer on Islamic Fundamentalism on page 340. Other readers 
might make this a Book Club selection. Chandra’s book is a slick read, but 
if you were reading David Foster Wallace’s dense, self-referential Infinite 
Jest, it would feel good to know that other people had to suffer the 
chapter-sized footnotes too.

Why Size Matters: When the typical bestseller is a slim, PowerPoint-assisted 
document with chapter synopses and highlighted key points, the gargantuan 
novel signals serious literary intent. “It’s 800 pages, so it’s got to be 
worth it,” the reader thinks. “It’s 800 pages, I’ve got to read the whole 
thing before I slam it-na, too much effort,” the reviewer thinks. “It’s 800 
pages, so we’re putting it on the shortlist in case someone asks us to prove 
we’ve read it,” the Booker judge thinks.

Paisa vasool? Strange as it may seem, the big book delivers on this 
count—regardless of literary quality. Sacred Games is a dark, edgy thriller 
that keeps the pace going, and that would have been just as good if it had 
lost 200-odd pages; A Suitable Boy could have lost 400 pages without losing 
the rhythm of the story. But at half the size, there would have been no halo 
effect for the reader, none of the virtuous glow that comes from making an 
effort. To finish is its own reward, and allows you automatic bragging, or 
complaining, rights.

The arguments against big books are many—for me, the most compelling was 
made by the tendons in my left wrist, which may never be the same again. But 
few make the argument for big books.

That in an age when we’re used to consuming everything, even literature, at 
high speed, the oversized novel forces you to slow down, to pay attention, 
to read painstakingly. That staying with one book for weeks, even months, 
means that whether you liked it or not, you will remember the experience.

That, and I’d urge you to try this in our times, when reading slots in 
somewhere between time-pass and selfish solitary indulgence, the big book 
offers you the chance to go back to an older method of reading. Call your 
friends over once a week, take turns reading a chapter aloud, and see if 
some of your fixed ideas about storytelling don’t change. It worked for 
Dickens and the 19th century institution of the three-decker novel. It could 
work for this 21st century morality tale of good and evil in the twisted, 
compelling Bombay underworld.

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