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Jun. 21st, 2009 12:15 pmThinking about a hypothetical list of works to reread annually gets me meditating on rereading in general. Case studies:
Every other time I read King Lear it bores the crap out of me, feelingly utterly unreal and annoyingly structureless, and every other other time I read it it's soul-shatteringly great and I weep. This is obviously not a principle, just a coincidental alternation from having read it about 5 times - soul shatterer's up to bat - none of them particularly recently.
I read Crying of Lot 49 once or twice in the '90s and liked it pretty superficially - asked, I might have said it was 'zany and creepy' or something, though I'm always underestimating my dead selves. Then I read it in 2006 and barely finished it: it all seemed kind of obvious and foolish, with a pickup in energy and interest in the last chapters but not as much of one as I'd remembered, and ultimately nothing very special happening at all. And then I reread it to help teach it in 2007 and it was sublime. I was reading it carefully, therefore chasing down connections, keeping track of symbols, trying to relate it to Pynchon's likely reading down to that time, and it became a hell of a thing. Depth metaphors are faded, but it seemed exactly like finally seeing some Magic Eye metropolis of all-but-infinitely layered intrications of meaning where crayon scribbles had been. Except for certain parts which I will always find stupid, but even those now seemed to have a bait or narcotizing function, as ways to keep readers on the protagonist's page, to do to us some of what was done to her.
Rereading shorter works over and over across some relatively brief period of time turns up all kinds of patternless variations on these experiences: eurekas, total bored burnouts, feelings like you'd never read this before even though you did just yesterday, even pretty closely reproduced reactions of admiration or censure inspired by the very same aspects. There's definitely a real burnout arc - if I read "The Circular Ruins" more than a couple more times this year it's going to burn away for a while - but it's not always where you think it is. Which is why scheduled rereadings sound insane. I think a year off in between can recharge almost anything worthy though, or anyway what in you will ring against worth. But maybe not as reliably as two. Waiting for years before coming back to something can be a sign of love (an emotion I feel for neither Lear or Lot 49 so far): you don't want to even risk such burnout, the possibility of not being able to know whether the magic's faded because it's too soon or because you were wrong about magic before.
And some things you might not even need to reread. I think constantly about certain late Kafka stories I only read once. I'm not saying I remember them accurately, but the memories I do have still fascinate.
Some other things I wonder if you could even burn out. Obviously the answer is yes, but realism doesn't stop my wondering: suppose you read Prometheus Unbound every night for a week. Who the hell would you be by Sunday?
What I feel when I come back to that one, or Peer Gynt or some few other things, might even be better than the oh my god I love this can this possibly exist where am I searing love-falls of the first times. It's the certainty that I'm going to love it and that for once something cannot possibly disappoint me - and maybe that's a faith that all by itself prevents such disappointment, the normal cycles of missing appointments with works of art or being exactly where they are by chance or suddenly finding them.
Every other time I read King Lear it bores the crap out of me, feelingly utterly unreal and annoyingly structureless, and every other other time I read it it's soul-shatteringly great and I weep. This is obviously not a principle, just a coincidental alternation from having read it about 5 times - soul shatterer's up to bat - none of them particularly recently.
I read Crying of Lot 49 once or twice in the '90s and liked it pretty superficially - asked, I might have said it was 'zany and creepy' or something, though I'm always underestimating my dead selves. Then I read it in 2006 and barely finished it: it all seemed kind of obvious and foolish, with a pickup in energy and interest in the last chapters but not as much of one as I'd remembered, and ultimately nothing very special happening at all. And then I reread it to help teach it in 2007 and it was sublime. I was reading it carefully, therefore chasing down connections, keeping track of symbols, trying to relate it to Pynchon's likely reading down to that time, and it became a hell of a thing. Depth metaphors are faded, but it seemed exactly like finally seeing some Magic Eye metropolis of all-but-infinitely layered intrications of meaning where crayon scribbles had been. Except for certain parts which I will always find stupid, but even those now seemed to have a bait or narcotizing function, as ways to keep readers on the protagonist's page, to do to us some of what was done to her.
Rereading shorter works over and over across some relatively brief period of time turns up all kinds of patternless variations on these experiences: eurekas, total bored burnouts, feelings like you'd never read this before even though you did just yesterday, even pretty closely reproduced reactions of admiration or censure inspired by the very same aspects. There's definitely a real burnout arc - if I read "The Circular Ruins" more than a couple more times this year it's going to burn away for a while - but it's not always where you think it is. Which is why scheduled rereadings sound insane. I think a year off in between can recharge almost anything worthy though, or anyway what in you will ring against worth. But maybe not as reliably as two. Waiting for years before coming back to something can be a sign of love (an emotion I feel for neither Lear or Lot 49 so far): you don't want to even risk such burnout, the possibility of not being able to know whether the magic's faded because it's too soon or because you were wrong about magic before.
And some things you might not even need to reread. I think constantly about certain late Kafka stories I only read once. I'm not saying I remember them accurately, but the memories I do have still fascinate.
Some other things I wonder if you could even burn out. Obviously the answer is yes, but realism doesn't stop my wondering: suppose you read Prometheus Unbound every night for a week. Who the hell would you be by Sunday?
What I feel when I come back to that one, or Peer Gynt or some few other things, might even be better than the oh my god I love this can this possibly exist where am I searing love-falls of the first times. It's the certainty that I'm going to love it and that for once something cannot possibly disappoint me - and maybe that's a faith that all by itself prevents such disappointment, the normal cycles of missing appointments with works of art or being exactly where they are by chance or suddenly finding them.
