🚀 go-pugleaf

As a fairly long-time TeX user and 3-year TUG member, I must heartily
concur with your opinion of the TeXBook as a user or training manual;
it is truly awful, and TeX would benefit enormously if somebody would
write a decent book about it.

Anyway, RUN, do not WALK to a book store and pick up a copy of LaTeX:
A Document Preperation System, by Leslie Lamport.  Latex is a macro 
package for TeX; more importantly, it is described with a book that
you can actually read--with a real reference section in the back!

As for the paragraph centered as the lines occur, you have to use
\halign, not \vbox; or, in LaTeX,

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{l}
the first line \\
the second line \\
the third line
\end{tabluar}
\end{center}

. . . if you really want to get fancy, you can div into TeX to make
the end of line character active and \let it equal to \\, but I'm not
sure how worthwhile that is.

Anyway, I felt just as you did--and had, in fact, given up on TeX--when
I found LaTeX and its book.  I have since gone through the entire TeXbook,
and done a great deal of LaTeX hacking, but I never would have even been
able to get started without Leslie Lamport's work.


-- 
-- Brian, the Man from Babble-on.		...!mcnc!rti!sas!bts
--
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part
that isn't thinking isn't thinking of" -- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS