The Re-Read
Dear Reader,
Oh yes, as you probably anticipated, it’s time for the re-read. (But what will we have on Friday…?)
I must admit that I am more excited about today than Monday’s post on “First Reads.” This is for a simple reason: it’s kind of hard to write about first reads. Of course, I have a wager with myself that today’s piece will somehow be shorter than Monday’s, because that’s just how things go. And to win (lose?) my bet, let’s get into it without further delay.
Certain works wear on you more the second time. In The Hedgehog Review, I found “Being There” and even the nearly perfect “Pay Attention!” to be better on the second time through. I’d liked them both well enough the first time, but on the re-read I appreciated them all the more. Some essays just deepen on second contact, as the overall shape becomes clear and the craft of the words and images can work upon you. Thus, teachers aren’t dolts for suggesting second reads. They simply overplay the importance and necessity of them. Second (and third) reads are potentially useful, but their importance is of defeasible nature, not universal. And as for their necessity, you will not find agreement from me on that count, though I’ll readily acknowledge their frequent value. The absolutes are unconvincing both empirically and, more important to my mind, whimsically.
But “Pay Attention!” is one worth exploring more. This is because it’s an essay well-suited to reading as a writer; it’s an impeccable (impeccable) timely read; it’s the best of its theme (and yes, I will fight all comers on this. Come at me with your essay suggestions—I’ve read them all). I’ve read this essay with fully engaged seventh-graders; I’ve read it with intrigued metaphysicians; I’ve heard it’s read by future physicians in narrative medicine programs. (I might be Mark Edmundson’s greatest hype man, which is amusing as you’ll see in a forthcoming piece.) It’s the rare piece that the old and young enjoy equally. As for how rare, examine your own experience on this.
All of that said—I didn’t quite see the full benefit of Edmundson’s essay until I re-read it. Now, everyone else gets it the first read, though some discussion and so forth tease out buried treasure. I, on the other hand, am a little dense and found it good the first time. That’s it. And then, one day, I re-read it and then I started teaching it, and I find myself enjoying it more on each revisit. Sometimes I only re-read sections of it, as I’ve read it end-to-end dozens of times. And even those sectional re-reads are pleasant. It’s a heck of a read, today, yesterday, tomorrow.
I spend a rather absurd amount of time re-reading. It’s the nature of my day job. Of course, I also get to re-read for research, which is still work but not technically “the day job.” And I even re-read for some volunteer work—to the tune of at least three books each summer. One thing you notice when you re-read enough, is that the re-read starts to influence your thinking and speech (and if you write, your writing). There’s a certain inescapable interwovenness.
If you have bothered to read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (or, for the lazy and/or obtuse, The Power of Habit), then this interweaving is not surprising. It’s to be expected. Of course, I’ve bothered to read Aristotle, and I still find myself surprised with just how much my reading, particularly my re-reading, starts to whistle in my ear, shift my gaze, alter even my food munching. I don’t write this to suggest that I’m some sort of literary aesthete who is hypersensitive to his environment (ha!), but to acknowledge that my sensorial experience gets somewhat affected by my re-reading. There’s an interpretation or reinterpretation of experience that can happen through the habituating influence of re-reading. It’s just shy of the line of memorization, but sometimes it can even be that. How many stray lines are unintentionally memorized for you?
Some re-reading is essentially the nostalgia re-read. I almost made that a separate post, but then I’d have to write it. It also feels a bit contrived to separate the nostalgia re-read from its friends.
Those with children—or nieces and nephews—can give themselves excuse for certain re-reads. (If you’re lacking either but need to scratch that itch, do volunteer literacy work. You’re welcome.) I’m totally re-reading Bill Peet with my nieces and nephews or for my literacy work. It’s absolutely positively not for myself. Re-reading Half Magic didn’t happen because I was thrilled to have found an old friend; no, that was clearly an example of reading for others.
Yet other nostalgia re-reading is there, not necessarily from youth, to allow us to re-inhabit a time or mental space we once knew. Some nostalgia re-reading even lets us return to the place we read the work the first time, a bit like certain smells transport us to places and people with a vividness no image could inspire. Some of my nostalgia re-reads remind me of who gave me the book, my excitement to try it out.
A few of my re-reads are actually a hybrid of work demands and nostalgia, which makes them strange to experience. The re-read is demanded and possesses this present-tense fixity, and yet the nostalgia adds a temporal mist to the experience. So in the narrow sense, these are just plain old re-reads, as a variety of experiences can attend a re-read. And that is the sense that matters. Still, it’s worth considering some of that variety sometimes. And so, you might consider for yourself whether your nostalgia re-reads are singularly so. If you’d rather not analyze your re-reads, that is more than fair, too.
At the time of this writing, I have a few nostalgia re-reads saved. That is, I did the first read, but the planned-for re-read hasn’t happened yet. Have you saved any such re-reads for a semi-special occasion? (It’s okay if you’re plowing through that list. I’ve definitely been working through my own!)
Not every re-read possesses any deep-seated nostalgia. Sometimes we just want to re-read it. If it’s an Agatha Christie mystery, we might have even forgotten the plot. If it’s a Zane Grey Western, there’s an adventure to be had (and, somehow, as bad as his writing is, exquisite description of the western landscape. No, I don’t know how this works, but it is so). Re-reading Disciplined Entrepreneurship? Almost definitely not a nostalgia dive, however useful the read.
There is certainly a question about the purely informational re-read, one I don’t think I’ll explore here, not least because we haven’t addressed utility or information reads previously, and there are a few different kinds. But for now, I’ll at least note that it’s the rare bird from those realms that would be a nostalgia read or read for its craft.
As you’ve seen from the examples above, re-reads of the kind we’re exploring here involve nostalgia, deeper appreciation, or comfort. There’s a re-inhabiting or a reappraisal. While there is the occasional disappointment in the mix—I’m scared to re-read a few pieces because I’m worried I’ll no longer love them—most re-reads remind us of how precious the first read was and then wear a deeper groove in our heart. And on a few occasions, the re-read completely alters our appreciation of the work, moving it from a good read to a transforming one.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. Yes, this one is shorter, even with a postscript.
P.P.S. After my pleading, The Hedgehog Review was kind enough to let me offer you this PDF of “Pay Attention,” with this important note: “This article originally appeared in The Hedgehog Review, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2014; used by permission; hedgehogreview.com.”