The Strongest Part of a Book is the Middle

The weakest parts are the bits on either end

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William Worchester Churchill, Woman Reading on a Settee

An author writes because he loves the subject at hand. Indeed, he loves that topic so much that he doesn’t particularly care about its connection to the rest of reality. His motto, like that of the immortal Edith Piaf and all other heedless lovers, is Je m’en fous du monde entier.¹

An author writes the bits on either end of a book because he feels that he has to. Readers, he has been told, need an introduction that will draw them into the heart of the subject at hand, and, once the visit is complete, a conclusion that will convince them that the experience was worth their while.

The fruits of such forced labor are rarely as sweet as those the author tended with true love. What is worse, the attempt to connect the things that he knows best to matters of lesser interest often results in errors. (Such mistakes abound, so much so that I have adopted a rule that forbids me from complaining of mistakes of fact committed in the first or last chapters of a book, or the first and last paragraphs of an article.)

1. As this is a family-friendly blog, I will translate this as “For all I care, the whole world can take a long walk off a short pier.”