Re-Reading, Reconsidered
Dear Reader,
For some reason, I prefer the hyphenated “re-read” when I’m reading digitally, but “reread” in print. Someone better connected with typography and psychology might have an answer for why that is, but I just cringe at “reread” online. Just looks wrong. So re-read it is.
I hadn’t planned on this piece, not least because there are—checks notes—thirty-two pieces already in draft form. This doesn’t include what remaining few are in my head and not yet started. And I should really finish the piece on marginalia before tackling this one… but the spirit so moves.
I’ve been sitting on Alan Jacobs’ excellent three reasons for re-reading for two months now, waiting for a good moment to share. And I’ll do so now, as it provides healthier framework for re-reading than what will follow. His second reason for re-reading—“Books I have read but feel I haven’t fully grasped and so want to re-read to get more out of them”—is my favorite. I have other reasons that I’ll re-read, but his is a splendid, readerly list. And I like it very much in contrast with what I’m about to share, even if I’m suspicious that Jacobs himself would agree with the following thoughts on (re-)reading.
A friend had sent me a different article via the CiRCE Institute, but when I saw “8 Habits of Every Great Reader,” I decided to click on over. Sure enough, it was an interesting set of suggestions. But the one that brought a scowl was this:
A great number of things are the marks of a good reader, but chief among those—and often the most overlooked—is the willingness to re-read books. A good reader is not the person who can read through books the fastest. A good reader is not the one who can read many books simultaneously. A good reader is not the one who can see the “deepest” stuff or tell you the plot line. A good reader is one who knows that in order to read well, he or she must read the book again. And again. And maybe again.
I’ll note that every bit of disagreement I have with the above pronouncement I had in my first read of it. No re-reading required.
While all of the above is distastefully narrowing—e.g., “but chief among those”—the most obnoxious is that “A good reader is one who knows that in order to read well, he or she must read the book again.” Must. MUST?!
Malarkey.
(The author goes on to invoke C.S. Lewis as the sage authority upon which his assertion might rest, but I’ll merrily disagree with Lewis as well. First, because Lewis is wrong on this point. And second, because Lewis can be a boring scold whose every word is not burnished gold. I’ll take his critique, “An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only” on myself, as I would rather be unliterary than so errantly censorious. To the original CiRCE excerpt, I’m not completely certain whether being literary and being a good reader are necessarily synonymous. That’s a further quibble, and I might be convinced that the two terms are synonymous, but I’m not convinced by this passing mention alone.)
Now, I’m already on the record that teachers who subscribe to the above quote “simply overplay the importance and necessity of [re-reads].” I’m also on the record that “no one comprehends a text fully,” however many reads are put in. But I do think a rich-enough read can be had in a single reading. That some readers are themselves inadequate to such labors is not the same as all readers being inadequate to such labors.
Educators continue to forget this distinction and then create universally enforced rules upon their pupils (and the general public), rules that often do more to dampen any interest in reading at all than to inspire better and more frequent reading.
Put more pointedly, just because you struggle with reading in a particular way and yet you’ve managed some intricate system that might be the reason you’ve succeeded academically, that doesn’t mean that your system is universally applicable or necessary. Received wisdom isn’t always wisdom…
Stephen Booth and the Re-Read
If you want to play the appeal-to-authority game with literary scholars, I can match you one-to-one with this newsletter’s favorite luminary, one Stephen Booth. With keen observation he writes: “I also think that the frequency of second readings by casual (by which I guess I mean 'real') readers is exaggerated by noncasual readers for whom belief in the commonness of such exercises is prerequisite to acceptance of their own critical or scholarly theses.”
Take careful note of what’s being said there. Unless people re-read, these scholarly theses in literary studies do not hold. Put another way, many (if not most) literary scholars write analyses that apply only to the subset of readers who’ve re-read a particular work. They cannot capture the experience of a single read. And I don’t know how you put that down as a failure of the reader. That’s a failure of the skill and imagination of the literary critic.
At the most generous, it’s a failure to acknowledge that their writings pertain to the set of re-readers alone. Instead, the impression is left that all reading is re-reading. That everyone re-reads everything. That the literary scholar’s job is to account for the experience of re-readers, not the one-time or first-time readers. And that last is a fascinating little assumption.
A thing that Booth highlights exceptionally well is that re-reading is a different kind of reading. And re-reading interacts with the first read:
When one reads a line, sentence, paragraph, scene, chapter, or complete work and then goes back and rereads, the second reading is a product of the first—not, as criticism seems often to suggest, a wholesomer substitute for it.
The crazy thing about Booth’s whole book is that it is, in large part, an exploration of why we might re-read. He’s not an enemy of re-reading—it’s his job. But he isn’t inventing a false elevation of re-reading. He isn’t inventing a false narrative of re-reading to support his academic predilections or importance. And he isn’t assuming that all reading is re-reading or that a literary critic should have no investment in the realities of a first or single read.
(As a bit of mostly unrelated commentary, Booth’s own book deeply rewards the re-read, which is not actually the case of most academic books. But had I read it only once instead of repeatedly, I’d have benefited from its insights. My subsequent reads were for different purposes.)
Why do we re-read? To what end?
These are, in fact, the questions that matter most when it comes to re-reading.
If it’s a perfunctory re-read so that you might satisfy Lewis’s idea of a literary person, well, you’re a child. You don’t need Lewis’s commendation for your reading habits. And you certainly shouldn’t be re-reading in order to satisfy some sort of literary affectation. While practicing certain habits until they become regular and enjoyable habits can be a good form of apprenticeship, taking on habits primarily to satisfy some distant sage can just as easily make you quite the poser.
We might re-read as a writer. We might re-read in order to retry a book. We might re-read because we needed a certain kind of reminder. We might re-read in order to meditate upon the text. We might re-read on behalf of others.
We might not re-read to maintain fond memory. We might not re-read because the book was a gateway read (similar to a scaffolding read, though not necessarily the same). We might not re-read because the read clunks, and why would we do that to ourselves again? We might not re-read because we have a book of books. We might not re-read because our first read did enough.
We might not re-read because, as Gabriel Zaid highlights in So Many Books, “a full-time reader can’t read more than 200 books in a year.” Now that number is an estimate, but a fairly reasonable one given the varying difficulties of texts and the varying lengths of them. If I want to be a completest reader (newsletter on this coming soon), there’s a lot of Shakespeare or Ambrose Bierce or Poe or Tolstoy or Douglas Walton to read. For those that want to play the inane Core Knowledge game, volume especially matters in that context. (Thus Neil Postman’s outstanding insight that Core Knowledge drops into trivia, and which trivia is preferred is both fully subjective and boundless, the very opposite of many of its cheerful adherents’ imaginings.)
Regardless, if we allow a full-time reader 200 books a year and 50 good years of reading, that’s only 10,000 books in a lifetime. And that’s before re-reading is considered.
Not too many people are full-time readers, even in (or perhaps especially in) education. Considering again So Many Books:
Time is by far the most expensive aspect of reading, excepting time spent in certain circumstances: in transit, ill health, prison, or retirement. In a wealthy economy, time is worth more than things, and it is easier to buy things than to find the time to enjoy them. To purchase books that one will never read is understandable: we think we might read them one day, and in the meantime, they can be shown off to visitors or mentioned in conversation. Reading is a luxury of the poor, the sick, prisoners, retirees, students. As students become young executives with overcrowded schedules, and as their salaries rise, reading (if it is not required) becomes a luxury for them, too.
So people might not re-read because they haven’t the time, not if they wish to attend to the other books they want to read. Not all of us are Oxford dons or independently wealthy. If a person wants to be well-read, and time is even more limited than for the “professional reader," then perhaps an irregular habit of re-reading isn’t the mark of a bad reader but a good reader doing the best they can.
If you want to build a non-reader, first tell them to read only things that bore them and second tell them to re-read those same things. This is what most of what our intellectual gatekeepers do. And then they wonder why no one’s following their sage utterances.
Now you can ask anyone who’s had the unfortunate experience of reading alongside me or under my tutelage: I don’t fear to take on the thickest and thorniest of reads. I’ve taken high schoolers through books that college professors would think twice before presenting to their undergraduates. And we do re-read. Hell, to one reading seminar I’ve led for a near decade I assign this brief podcast episode as warm-up. So I am not an iconoclast. I am not an anarchist.
I am, however, not even remotely persuaded that a good reader must re-read or that re-reading is “chief” among the attributes of a good reader. Re-reading might be overlooked culture-wide as an enjoyable and even important aspect of developing as a reader. But perhaps we might lay off with the universal declarations of its superiority and necessity. I myself like high standards and clearly relish “classic works” and other such markers of reading rigor. I’m just not persuaded—and have plenty of experiential and professional insight to the contrary—by some of the varied "Arbiters of Culture, Defenders of the Realm" assertions about rigor.
The argument above rests on, well, an appeal to authority—the invocation of C.S. Lewis. That’s its argumentative move. The rest is a set of assertions. Now to be fair, those assertions might rest on a background set of assumptions about activities related to re-reading: marginalia and so forth. Might. Even if we were to artificially supplement those (going well beyond the actual content of the quote), that leaves us with questions about the relationship between marginalia and understanding. That discussion I’ll save for another day, but I’ll offer for now that that relationship isn’t quite so sturdy as its advocates hope.
So what has been your experience with re-reading? Do you like Jacobs’ more expansive sort of take? Any you’d add to his list?
And perhaps you’re finding yourself quibbling with my piece’s argument—perhaps you think that re-reading is the chief mark of a good reader. Perhaps you’re wanting to suggest that its author is interested in professional readers who have more time for re-reading, and thus my critiques don’t approximate as closely as I imagine.
Or perhaps you’re wondering what the reading ratio for first readings versus re-readings might be, especially if there’s a difference for the professional reader, the avid nonprofessional reader, and the reluctant reader.
Happy pondering,
Kreigh
P.S. I’m presently re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff (several books), Black Beauty, three articles I’m teaching, and two other books. Next month I’ll be re-reading two more books. And so on.
I re-read extensively. And value it greatly. I’m in a great season of re-reading. So I don’t feel personally attacked by those who advocate for re-reading. What I question is its elevation.
P.P.S. If you’re into reading business articles, through March 4th MIT Sloan Management Review has its articles available for free like “When Collaboration Fails and How to Fix It”. If I can clear the fog of reading 500+ pages of philosophy the past week, you know what I’ll be doing tomorrow…