They are called "novels," after all.

Current book: White Noise
Pages read: 272-326 (end)

At the end, Gladney hunts down the researcher who gave his wife the experimental drugs in exchange for sex and tries to kill him. He ends up botching the job by shooting him in the hip, getting shot in the wrist himself, and finally dragging the guy to a Catholic charity hospital where they're both treated by German nuns who don't believe in heaven. (Because, of course, DeLillo finds it necessary to make the point that people need religious devotees to keep the classic sense of religion for them, rather than doing it for themselves, and also that this need is fundamentally undermined by the fact that religious devotees may be as doubtful and human as everyone else. It would be a compelling point, if the conversation that elucidated it weren't written in stilted, obnoxiously academic dialogue.) Afterward, everything's back to normal (and by normal, I mean stupidly unrealistic bleak modern consumerist society). The end.

I'm terribly sad that it's over. I bet you can tell.

I think part of the reason so many of the books on this list are utterly painful is the phenomenon of novelty. There are many, many works of literature that are greatly respected because of the fact that their authors did something in them that had never been done before, or never been done quite the same way. In a sense, I can understand and agree with that respect. That does not, however, make them necessarily pleasant to read, nor, on a stand-alone basis, particularly meritorious as works of art.

Tomorrow, Wide Sargasso Sea, which several friends profess to enjoy a great deal. Here's hoping.