The Retry
Dear Reader,
Sometimes, the time and season of a read just don’t align with you. You “don’t get” the work, and you frankly aren’t too bothered by this fact. Sometimes, you haven’t even finished the read before putting it down. But eventually you try it again.
A read that particularly comes to mind for me is Josef Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture, which I first read in college. It did nothing for me in college. It was literally an ambivalent read. And then, for some reason I cannot discern, I decided to read it again several years after graduation. I read a version that was this time paired with his The Philosophical Act, and I was hooked. There was something meaty in there that I just couldn’t appreciate in college. I hadn’t had enough life experience, or other intellectual experience, or something. Whatever I was missing had been appended. The book was magic, transforming my intellectual life, or perhaps echoing it with a deeper resonance than I’d known possible.
(Yes, in case you’re wondering, this is one of the books I’m scared to re-read that I wrote about last time. Is the magic still there, or was it simply a sort of gateway to deeper things?)
Of course, I’m kind of an all-pro when it comes to the retry. And I don’t state this as a point of pride. It’s rather embarrassing, really. My favorite example is probably Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Now, I grew up with a particular distaste for certain “period” films (also certain other films) because my best friend and I wanted to watch Star Wars and the TV at his house was dominated by every staged version of every Jane Austen book ever made. (My facts may be slightly awry on this point, but there was never enough Star Wars is what I’m trying to say.) So, Jane Austen. The worst.
In seventh grade, I decided to try Ms. Austen out. Don’t ask me why. Once tried, I did not like her. And by her, I mean Pride and Prejudice. It was boring. People sat around talking and dancing. What even was this book? Was this a book? Me, a child, “Oh, this’ll be like Little Women”! It was not like Little Women. And so Pride and Prejudice took the prize as the first book I ever started and didn’t finish.
Then in college, I was randomly in a cabin by myself for a few hours—well, it wasn’t too random, but it was unexpected—and since I hadn’t brought any study materials with me, I looked around the cabin for something to read. And there was Pride and Prejudice. Round two. Not too shabby, actually, but I got only seven chapters in before interruption. And as I had varsity sports, work, and a triple major to manage, I didn’t get around to finishing it.
And so, finally, in my mid-twenties, I purchased a copy of Pride and Prejudice. And I read it, start to finish. And, instead of it being an ambivalent read at best, I genuinely enjoyed it.
There, of course, is the interesting nature of the retry: sometimes you aren’t intellectually or experientially ready for a read; other times, you just couldn’t fit it into whatever time and mental space you had. This isn’t all bad, and sometimes we’re stuck doing reads anyway without giving them their full due. Yet there’s something curious about the retry, that tackling of a read once more.
I’m not sure why anyone does it. I get the tackling of a difficult book once and grinding your way through to the finish, painful though it might be. But why retry something you’ve already tasted and found wanting?
Sometimes, I realize, there’s the pressure from others: “Oh, you just have to finish it! It gets so much better at the end.” False words, except for all the times they are not. (Yes, I did just plop a defeasible statement in the middle of our calm discussion. Enjoying that term yet? All writers have their tics, and some of them are intentional…) And those it-gets-so-much-better recommendations can also trigger a contrarian response. I don’t always enjoy a forcible “must read” commentary from friends and acquaintances.
And so the idea that pressure is why we retry a read doesn’t quite make sense. Even the psychological pressure of incompleteness doesn’t apply to the cases where we did finish the read but didn’t like it.
I must admit that I have some inchoate thoughts on why we might retry a read, but for once I’ll hold them back and leave the full questing to you, no guide aside from those you might discuss it with.
Before I conclude, I should probably deal with an area of reading that I don’t know whether I’ll ever write about, at least not in depth. It’s possible. Lay perspectives have value, of course. Not all lay perspectives have value, though, and I’m discerning whether to share mine, however hard won. The next paragraph explains my difficulty.
Here it is: the entire category of poetry has basically been a retry for me. And I still won’t go near T.S. Eliot. Not for me the cleverness of a buried verse and hidden allusion. Oh, I appreciate the uncertainty and possibility within poetry, but some of the more overtly clever poets can go away. And since most teachers are enamored with such poets—and students’ perpetual inability to locate the hiddenness—that my experience of poetry was devoid of any richness (even as the teachers droned on about the riches they were bestowing us with, showering us with, initiating us into) is not even remotely surprising. Once I was forced to study and interpret poetry for non-English classes in college, I finally found that there were riches, that poems were worth digging around in and placing in your memory. I’m thankful I gave them the retry (and realized which ones weren’t worth the attempt, at least not yet…).
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. After writing about “The Comfort Read,” I stumbled upon this cartoon and I wish I’d had it for you that day.
P.P.S. So I was given a preview copy of Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought, which might end up being my favorite preview book, simply because its cover is superb. (I’ve received multiple such preview books before.) And if you recall, I mentioned it a month ago as a possible summer read with some of you. Anyone game for doing one chapter a week, starting May 26th? Just shoot me an email. If there are at least five of you, I’ll read alongside you and even write on the weekly chapter.