The Federalist
Where to begin? For starters, this is, as far as I can tell, only my third unfinished book since 2008. I either pick extremely well, or I’m extremely stubborn. You be the judge. Unlike the others (you can find them, but they shall remain nameless here), where I didn’t necessarily have expectations going into them, this one, The Federalist—you know, the book that explains the thinking behind the thinking behind the Constitution—well, with this one I did. Unfortunately, I’m one of those enlightened blokes who believes reading books like this are good for us, and I’m probably right about that, but being good for us and being useful to us are two completely different things.
Don’t get me wrong: I get just as fed up as the next person when political pundits bloviate about some constitutional issue while claiming they know exactly what the founders meant when they wrote it. Fine! But you know—you know!—they’ve never read The Federalist (yes, aka The Federalist Papers). Of course they haven’t. They’ve never read anything; they just have their obnoxious opinions. That’s exactly how I came to read this in the first place, as if I was going to be able to respond directly to all those soapbox misinformants, as if I ever get into conversations debating the finer points of the Constitution. As if. One might think I was doomed from the start. One might be right.
The idea was simple: 85 articles, each about five pages in length, one per night for something like 10 weeks. Totally doable. I started strong, quickly began to fade, but kept the lamplight burning, and, after three months, I’d only managed about a fifth of the book. That was in January, and the book has been on my nightstand alternately pleading and taunting ever since. I was enough of a masochist to keep it there, but apparently not enough of one to actually break it open again and read number 20, the fifth article in a row continuing the same subject introduced in number 15, “Concerning the Defects of the Present Confederation, in Relation to the Principle of Legislation for the States in their Collective Capacities.” How I got past the table of contents is beyond me.
If you’ve read The Federalist and found it enlightening, moving, life-changing, etc., etc., good for you. Truly, I’m happy. But, for this reader, the odds of any reward for enduring another 380 pages, other than the sketchy satisfaction of being better than the invisible multitudes who have not read this for pleasure, had slipped below zero long before I called it quits after article 19. I might have been a better person for finishing this, but I know I’m a happier person for not finishing.
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