I don't agree with this line of thinking, that the concept of the art in question lies entirely with the reader or viewer. If a piece of art (i.e. a book or painting) is conceived as a whole and executed as a whole, then finishing it is necessary to understanding and appreciating that piece of art.<p>If you are not enjoying a book, feel free to put it down. I have many times. But I don't pretend that I have formed a complete and valid judgment. I forfeit that when I fail to comprehend the work as a whole.<p>As for whether endings are "necessary" when you have enjoyed a book, it depends on how necessary the author intended it to be, not on whether (as the author was rightly, in my opinion, angered by) the reader felt he was "done." It's a bit like knocking the wings off a statue because you think it looks better that way. What you think looks better isn't the point. The statue was created that way because that's the way the creator wanted it created.<p>Personally, I think it is critical to read every word as the author intended. Otherwise you are appointing yourself as editor over their artistic imagination. You are in charge of your own time and enjoyment, but not the structure and content of their work.
Appropriately enough, I read about half his article, thought "this is quite interesting, but I think I've got the message" and then stopped reading any more.
A neat idea I've heard on this topic:<p>Suppose you read 20 books a year. With 50 years of life, that's 1000 more books in your lifetime. (Or 2000, or 5000).<p>Why waste a slot on a book that isn't useful? Many books, esp. modern non-fiction, are needlessly padded to fill a length requirement (since a 20-page "book" can't be taken seriously).
I think the answer for this is different for fiction and non-fiction. If I don't finish a non-fiction book, I still sometimes consider it "read", if I have gotten the gest of it. This is especially true if the author goes into more detail towards the end of the book after making their point. Non-completed fiction books I usually don't recommend to friends.
Ah, the vindication of Neal Stephenson! :)<p>Also: It's been a long time since I read Godel Escher Bach, so I cannot trust this for sure, but at the time I got the feeling there were hints that the book as such ended before the last page, the remainder was just there as filler.
<i>"Or are there occasions when we might choose to leave off a book before the end, or even only half way through, and nevertheless feel that it was good, even excellent, that we were glad we read what we read, but don’t feel the need to finish it?"</i><p>I finish most books I start, but I choose what to read very carefully. However, I stop playing video games partially through all the time and feel little to no remorse over not finishing them.
I remember cheating on Umberto Eco's <i>Foucault's Pendulum</i>. If you've never read the book, it's spent in double and triple flashbacks: "To understand where I am now, I must tell you about that night in the observatory. // There I was, cowering in a telescope, and I thought back on all that had come before, especially the job as an editor that I used to have. // While I worked as a publisher I remembered how I first met Jacopo Belbo...". I suppose we would describe it as a stack data structure, you keep pushing a new "present" onto the end of the existing one.<p>So here's how I cheated. At one point the main character suddenly takes a trip off to Brazil, and I thought, "man, this is getting ridiculous. I bet if I just skip ahead to whenever he comes back from Brazil, I won't have missed much." It turns out that while I had missed some important things, like a new girlfriend who becomes a major player in the story, I saw enough of them afterwards to conjecture about what had happened in Brazil.<p>What's more interesting to me is the set of books that I keep returning to. I have probably read Zelazny's <i>Great Book of Amber</i> (which is itself 10 novels) five or six times in my life, maybe more. It just captures me and takes me on a ride, each time.
50 pages into a rather short novel may be substantial enough; 50 pages of War and Peace only scratch the surface. I wasn't hooked in the first 50 pages of W&P, but I came to enjoy the book immensely in a few hundred.<p>I'm already saving plenty of time by picking what I read carefully.
Moving from paper books to a kindle means my tolerance for poor quality writing has dropped massively. Instead of a few books waiting to be read and the need to hunt around bookstores for replacements I've got a dozen books I intend to read already at my fingertips and millions more a few minutes away online.<p>If I decide a book is not worth continuing (even if I spent money for it because the free sample was inconclusive) then I won't continue it. I'm too time poor to waste my life on bad books.
I think the answer for this is different for fiction and non-fiction. If I don't finish a non-fiction book, I still sometimes consider it "read", if I have gotten the gest of it. This is especially true if the author goes into more detail towards the end of the book after making their point. Non-completed fiction books I usually don't recommend to friends.
Perhaps not an argument for <i>finishing</i> all books, but I personally will read quite deep into books I am not enjoying in a bid to not miss something good. For as many books I have hated the entire way through (or put down partway through), I have read at least twice as many that I came to love as late as 1/3 of the way through.
Case in point, I picked up a novel by Thomas Pynchon when the Borders stores were closing down. I read about a third of it and thought 'OK I get it, I understand this guy's style'. If I had more time I could see myself enjoying the entire thing. Instead I sold it at a used book store last weekend.