(no subject)

[proximoception]

Rereading again: Ever love a book so much you read it over and over?

Because I never, ever have. Closest I've done like it is rereading poems and short stories for work, or anyway with some thought of taking them apart to understand them. If I love a book a lot I might look back over it and reread some passages after finishing, but that's about it. I'm both jealous and confused at people who reread continuously out of love.

Books I love most often get diminished by the rereading, even after years have passed. Blood Meridian, The Road, Miss Lonelyhearts, even Hamlet took a bit of a hit, though they were all still worth it, especially Meridian which was fun for detective work.

I guess I associate continuous rereading with youth, with some more naive approach--asking for the same bedtime story every night. What did I do that with? I know I read Tolkien twice or thrice as a kid, but even those readings must have been separated by a couple years. I do remember going back and rereading certain stretches of Catch-22 multiple times at 16. The book got torn up some but I don't think it started in good shape, and I don't think I read the whole thing through more than twice. People reading books to pieces, that's what I'm talking about. Imagine doing that.

My wife read Fiskadoro and then forgot if she'd finished it, started again halfway through and read to the end, at some point realizing she had in fact finished it but not minding. And then she wanted me to read it to her aloud, and heard half of it again that way. Before I met her she only had Stephen King books around--she was very poor--and she read them over and over and over. As a teenager she did the same with Ayn Rand's novels (don't worry, she's cured) and a few others, including The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich, which she says was good for keeping men from hitting on her on the bus. Some of these are still around and they're in tatters, and usually not even her original copies. She also does it with certain Steinbeck books and Of Human Bondage, just glides through them every couple years. I've bought her at least two new copies of both. And now with Murakami and Saramago.

My nearest equivalent would be poetry, I suppose. I don't think I've read anything "hundreds" of times, but with a poem like "Adonais" I must be past ten, maybe fifteen, over the years. There's some I'll always come back to, after a time lag, but the time lag feels pretty crucial (like with Borges stories). Probably people who claim to read a whole book through and then immediately reread it are most often exaggerating anyway, but it's such a lovely thought: something so good you don't even need variety. Being exactly where you want already.

Comments

[jones-casey.livejournal.com]

on a second reading, i like this entry even more.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

I think I have read Dubliners eight times for sheer enjoyment. I read Suttree three times but mostly to learn how to write certain ways. What do you think of Bloom saying he read Frye's book on Blake like 20 times?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

8! That's at least close to what I'm thinking of. Same copy? I've been meaning to reread Dubliners for a while now, esp. "The Dead" which I've always loved (for me = read maybe twice). I still can't believe all that happened by Shelley's grave.

Bloom is an exception, a natural speed-reader and non-sleeper--allegedly when he was young he sometimes read thousands of pages a night, and still manages hundreds easily. By now he's read an awful lot of books 20+ times, surely some 100+. My jaw drops when mere mortals do something like that, what with the time commitment.

I have read no book 8 times. I think I've read Hamlet about six, but for at least half of those it was assigned. That's probably my record for anything of more or less book length. Seen film and stage versions many times, too, of course, but that shouldn't count.

I wonder what movies I've rewatched most often. Might be up to four or five for Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. But I also remember as a kid, when pay per view was having free days, watching something random over and over: Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Night of the Comet.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Yes same copy of Dubliners. I'm an excessive underliner so I had to stop doing that on probably the third read. Which is a relief. Movies are so different. I have probably seen most of Finding Nemo thirty times and now Wall-E probably close to 15. Movies that don't belong to my kids: Star Wars probably 20... once a year forever. The Matrix probably 10.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Jaws too at least 20. I'm sort of obsessed with Robert Shaw's Quint.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

That must be the equivalent of what I'm talking about. 20+ times is a lot: you are one of these Others, enthusiasts.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

It's different with movies, I think, especially if they are on cable all the time. I'd never seek out Jaws but if it's on when I am surfing it's easy to keep it on. Movies like that the enchantment is uncomplex. Star Wars is an uncomplex nostalgia thing. The Matrix is something else altogether as would be Chinatown which I have watched a few times.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

What's that fluid that builds up in the muscles so you don't overuse them? Lactic acid? I must have a mental version of that, I guess--the thought of having watched Chinatown five more times by my age makes me actually wince, despite its being the perfect movie. And my imagination's astonished at those other numbers. I loved Jaws as a teenager, absolutely loved it, but it still feels too soon at 33 to see it a second time. I might prefer physically hurting myself in some minor way to watching Star Wars again (which would be c. the 3rd or 4th time), though I have nothing against it.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

I reread Forster.

I used to rewatch movies a lot more. But then, I was watching them to get a sense of how they were made.

And then I came to a point where I wondered if I'd started asking the question, asking how they were made, in order to survive rewatching them.

Although that's not exactly fair - because the more basic query is whether I started asking that question, "how was this thing built," in order to survive watching anything at all.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Had movies become too predictable for you?

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Merrill is someone I reread obsessively. A lot of the pleasure of reading for me, though, is anticipating rereading. But I don't have actually have to reread to ratify that pleasure. So I rarely read things more than twice (except to teach); and usually read only once.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

I've seen every episode of futurama at least four times, probably the same for home movies. but that's because i'm depressed and have long stretches of time where i dont want to think about anything. but I don't often reread. I often tell myself i'm going to reread, usually to convince myself to stop dwelling on a difficult passage and just get on with it, but rarely go through with it.

the things i reread most often are the things that are easiest to read. Just looking at the pile of books by my bed that's bloom essays, borges, short stories. I must have read the stars my destination at least three times as a kid, that's probably the upper limit for novels. Peer Gynt i read twice, maybe two and a half. Poems are more designed for rereading, novels I'm not so sure.

I do watch akira once a year, since the mid 90s. it's at the point where it doesnt even register as narrative anymore. just a series of moments. like a dream.

Oh I read invisible cities probably three times straight through but does that even count.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I think we're at about four for Futurama too.

Rereading in general I found conceptually confusing till deep in my 20s. Somehow the desperate feeling that there's only time to do everything once gets replaced by the desperate feeling that there's not even time for that, and that what you've once had tends to disappear also. You reread because it's like you never read.

With Invisible Cities and with the core Borges stories there is that tendency to just read them again immediately after. I think I read most of the Cities two or three times each before preceding, this last time, and am already thinking of picking it up again.

Everything is habit based, but I think reading most of all. If I read for an hour or two for a couple days, it's hard to stop myself on the third. Whereas if I haven't read at all it's hard to get through even a page.