The Book's Lover

The Book's Lover
Damiano Cali
Showing posts with label re-reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label re-reading. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Head in the Clouds: Naomi

Hermia & I went to see Cloud Atlas at the cinema.  Like, the NIGHT it came out.  (We’re that awesome.)  It was a very interesting experience, largely because she & I had very different relationships to the GENIUS David Mitchell book when we saw the film. 
I read Cloud Atlas two years ago, when a good friend of mine picked it for Book Club.  This Book Club, Gentle Readers, gets to be capitalized because we actually talked about the books at Book Club.  The rules of Book Club were the opposite of Fight Club: you always talk about Book Club!  Of course, now everyone in Book Club has moved away, and I have no more Book Club.  But I have Gentle Readers.  So things all worked out…
Back to the narrative: I read Cloud Atlas, and loved it, and have been SUPER FREAKING EXCITED about the movie for ages.  But it’s been two years since my reading.  So the book has that delightful, warm’n’fuzzy sensation of being loved while not being particularly well-remembered.  Hermia had just finished it, practically the day we saw the movie.  She was a bit more critical, as things were somewhat more sharply-edged in her mind. 
With the exception of the horrendously bad Asian make-up (did we HAVE to give everyone piss-poor Asiaticism? They all looked like Charleton Heston pretending to be Mexican in Touch of Evil.  It was offensive!), I thought that the movie was an overall success.  It was crazy ambitious.  Like, balls-to-the-wall, WTF, unfilmable ambitious.  It is not flawless; it is not perfect.  But the film did two things:
1) It made me feel, as I left the theatre, just as I had felt when I finished the book.  The book hangover and the movie hangover were JUST the same.  I was thoughtfully pleased, unsure of what had just happened, and damn sure I wanted to do it again. 
2) It made me want to re-read the book.  When I first finished Cloud Atlas two years ago, I was unsure as to whether I would ever re-read it.  Now I HAD TO. 
Gentle Readers, it’s even better the second time around!  This time I was not focused so very tightly on what happened.  I was able to unfocus my mental eye enough to take in the whole picture, to let the book happen to me, instead of barreling through the plot to see what happened next.  It was the Magic Eye version of reading.  I saw so many more layers, and so many colors of connection, than the first time I read Mitchell.  It was a bit like reading Shakespeare, for me.  No, I am not making Mitchell into the Bard: don’t get your panties all in a twist!  I am merely saying that when one reads Shakespeare for the second or third (or fifty-seventh) time, one lets go of plot and enjoys the language, the structure, the craft of it.  …There may have been a happy sigh, and some unobserved clutching of said book to my bosom. 
Cloud Atlas @ Barnes & Noble

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Possessed: Naomi

I don’t know about you, Gentle Readers, but I am always a bit anxious when I enjoy a book.  I’m afraid the author will do it wrong  If I love the book, follow the characters, am invested in the plot, who is to say that the ending won’t ruin everything?  So MANY books are great until the last 50 pages.  I don’t need a happy ending; just a good one.  So even reading a book I’ve enjoyed becomes fraught with peril as I approach the last few chapters. 
(It’s my main problem with Stephen King.  I think he’s very inventive, and sometimes quite good.  But then it’s like he gets near the end of the book, looks at his watch, and says to himself, “I can bang this out before dinner!”  And the ending is insipid.)  This is the way the book ends, not with a bang but a whimper. 
But then I read, and re-read, A.S. Byatt’s Possession. 
Which brings me to my question for today: What would one call the experience of reading a book one doesn’t remember, but knows one likes? 
I took a grad class at Very Distinguished University entitled “Booker Prize-winning Novels.”  This class introduced me to undiscovered novelists, including Ben Okri, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Salman Rushdie, and offered unread books by Peter Carey, Roddy Doyle, and J.M. Coetzee.  For me, though, the highlight of the course was my opportunity to re-read Possession.  A.S.Byatt’s novel had been placed first into my hands in my senior year of high school by Jolene, my AP English teacher (My junior year English teacher’s name was Earlene; such are the perils of living in the South). 
I loved loved loved it. 
And for the most part, I couldn’t remember a damn thing 5 years later.  I remembered the parallel narration and the scholarship-treasure hunt theme.  Mostly, I remembered adoring it.  But I had no clue how it ended, and no clue how the bits I remembered fit together.
Routinely, I have an excellent memory for things: books, people, movies, connections.  My mind is a repository of useless information.  (And yes, I kick ass at trivia games.)  So my re-reading experiences are usually friendly things, where I revisit people and places I love, but they are not voyages of discovery.   Re-reading is comforting, enjoyable, but can be a bit boring; I always know what comes next. 
Possession was different.
It was one of the single most perfect reading experiences of my life, Gentle Readers.  Because I remembered loving it, I knew the book would not disappoint me.  I knew the ending wouldn’t make me angry, or be unsatisfying.  So I was utterly, completely SAFE in my reading.  I could abandon myself without hesitation to the story, the imagery, and the characters.  I knew, you see, that it wouldn’t let me down. 
I luxuriated in this book.  I swam in it.  Usually, unless I am struck by a particularly lovely bit of writing, I am a pretty speedy reader.  Possession took me ages to read: almost two weeks.  Keep in mind, Gentle Readers, that I was a grad student on fellowship.  I was not working; reading was my job.  Two weeks was an eternity in which to read a book.  I would read a few chapters and then sit on my couch, chewing on what I’d just read.  I even took my time with Byatt’s faux-Victorian poetry, which is just as overwrought as the real thing.  And the book was just as good as I remembered it to be!  It had not gotten stale; I had not made it more interesting in the remembering.  It was a delightful experience. 
So how does one describe that feeling?  That perfect meeting of ignorance (or forgetfulness) and surety?  It is a perfect storm of safety and uncertainty.  You can place yourself without reservation in the author’s hands because you know you’ll like the ending, but you don’t know how you’ll get there.  It’s a bit like floating in warm water, with the sun on your face, and you know whatever happens, you’re OK.  Because you’re swimming in the Dead Sea.  And you can’t sink…

Possession @ Barnes & Noble