too short

As in "life is too short to spend time reading bad books." Recently, and twice, I've been suckered into reading things that "everybody's reading." Both books had a spiritual bent - the first is Eat Love Pray, which I found so completely tiresome that I gave up not even halfway through the first part. The second is not The Alchemist, but The Witch of Portobello by the same author -- Paulo Coehlo. I tried The Alchemist and couldn't get past the first chapter. I thought I'd try Witch because it purports to be about "the feminine side of divinity." If so, the feminine face is tedious when not irritating. Maybe a good deal is lost in translation, but the book is larded with the worst kind of pretentious claptrap that I've encountered in along time.

Which led me to wonder: Why is it so difficult to write persuasively about spirituality and the inner life of spiritual people? The best book I know about a spiritual conversion is The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. I think I like it because Maugham doesn't tell the story from the point of view of the converted, a man named Larry, but rather tells a story about how Larry's faith affects the people around him for good and for ill. It's not a treacly, hectoring lecture from A Teacher or The Sage or My Protector filled with hoary exhortations about "unconditional love" and "being true to yourSelf" disguised as a novel. It's a real novel about believable people dealing as best they can with an untenable situation -- and the reader gets it. Why is that so hard?