In a recent post that links back to an earlier post, my friend Adam Roberts talks about his lasting affection for Robert Graves’s book The White Goddess. When I was about eighteen, an older friend who loved that book pressed it on me, and because I trusted his judgment, I bought a copy of the book and sat down quite eagerly to read it. But it wholly defeated me. I found it almost literally unreadable. What I mean by that is that my eyes passed over all the words but I simply couldn’t figure out how they were related to one another. I made a strenuous effort but eventually set it aside.

I’ve tried several times over the years but have yet to get through The White Goddess. My most recent attempt was about six months ago, and I still find the book unreadable – though in a different way than I did forty years ago. Then I just couldn’t comprehend Graves at all; now I read a paragraph and think: “I believe there are a dozen demonstrably false statements in that one paragraph.” And even though I know that, as Adam says, the value of Graves’s book doesn’t depend on his being historically accurate, the sheer number of erroneous statements – some of them ludicrously wrong – just overwhelms me.

Another friend, Austin Kleon, wrote a post a few years ago on the virtues of saying “It wasn’t for me.” Not a judgment on the book; not a judgment on me; just a mismatch. The White Goddess and I are mismatched. Might that ever change? Austin knows that it’s possible: 

But in this case I have serious doubts. I’ve given this book forty years to connect with me; I think that’s enough.