Overdue
what gives you reading pleasure?
I definitely am short on time. This month is has too few days, and I have too much to do. The daylight hours are growing but still far too brief. There is a feeling of overwhelm suffusing everything I do.
Despite my current scarcity of free time, I love to read for pleasure and categorically refuse to give it up. I have a towering pile of library books that I have been intending to read for a long time. This small skyscaper of words is gathering a lot of dust. NYC’s public library system forgave all fines for the duration of the pandemic. Now they charge the fine but do not ask you to pay the fine. I have had three of these books so long that I’ve recently been sent “lost book notices.” They’re not lost. I am. I have a guilty conscience but not enough to return the books to circulation. Many of them took months to arrive on my hold shelf. Some took over a year…. I’m just flinging myself into this cycle of book hoarding.)
But today I started a new book from that pile. It’s called This Perfect Day and was written by the guy who wrote Rosemary’s Baby. I was two sentences in and realized that not only have I read this book before, I loved it and have read it twice.
Dilemma.
I have five overdue books that I need to read but I really love this book. It is pure pleasure. So…. do I read it even though I remember it? or do I put it aside knowing that I am likely to forget about it again…and therefore might never re-read it?
How frequently do you re-read favorite books? I know that every time I read a book again it changes for me. So do I keep this book squarely in the “I love it” category, or do I take the chance that it feels outdated since so much of my life has changed?
Like a magic spell or talisman, stories seem to have strange rules — they have this magical ability to effect profound personal change. And yet, once changed, they might not affect you the same way the second time.
WRITING NEWS:
Again, I’m running all over the city looking for inspiration or at least distraction. This week, I went to a fancy old-school club, played D&D in a divey bar, and attended an absinthe tasting with a cast of lovely underworld characters, one of which turned out to be a poet! In case you saw my photos on Instagram, the pen photo was an actual pen: a glass number with liquid ink and a beautiful nib. (click here here and here if you want to go down a nib vs nub rabbit hole—short answer is “all nibs are nubs but nibs and nobs are for cribbage”) it was hilarious that both kids told me to take the photo down because it looked too much like drugs. (ah how times change)
I felt terrible to skip an art gallery opening as well as a literary salon in a fabulous writer’s home this week, but I wanted a night off.
Did show off this fun outdoor art exhibit in my neighborhood — my son and I had a great discussion over the very old and perfect Four Trees and very new and already under repair Domino Effect (by Ingrid Ingrid) on 28 Liberty Plaza, and then even more so after visiting the open art studio of Kate (she didn’t give her last name) inside of the public part of the same building—about art and its influences, the relationship between art and the viewer (whether it is mandatory or incidental to the art) and how complicating something (in this case the light-up and sound part of the Domino Effect) could enhance or lessen the experience, based on whether or not it was working that day…but also the sounds the art exhibit makes took both of us out of the art itself and into commercialism…. anyway it was a good talk. When I have more time I may distill it into an essay on Medium.
I got edits back on my novel. I have only managed to read half of the editorial letter. This will require some time and mental space. I’m thinking of applying to a residency for summer or fall so that I can really dive in.
Why? Because it is grants season and taxes season and my soul is subsumed by numbers.
RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT:
This is something new. Extremely over-engineered seedless strawberries. Do you think they biologically altered the plant to grow without seeds like they’ve done with watermelon and lemons, or did someone remove the seeds the way you de-pit olives?
And why? Strawberries are far prettier with their unique seeds (see photo). (They’re the only fruit with the seeds on the outside.)
Not everything that’s new is better.
I read a fantastic article about desire vs pleasure and how humans clamor after desire to their own foolish detriment since it vanishes upon attainment (how many times have you bought something at a grocery or bakery and lost the urge to eat it after bringing it home?) — Most of our new products are designed to address desire - “I have to try this” instead of: “I love this, this was great, I want to have this again.”
People might be far-more-frequently satisfied if they sought pleasure instead.
I’m going to Kansas City, MO, this week - to the annual AWP writing conference that travels to various cities across the USA. Ironically, I will be in flight during the Superbowl, taking off from KC right before kickoff. If you attend this writing conference come visit me at the Pen Parentis table at the bookfair: T1115. I’d love to see you. (If you are a writer who has kids, come to our free reception and have a drink with me - Friday Feb 9 6pm to 7:30pm local time at the Convention Center Marriott, 12th Street room (street level). You can RSVP if you like.
5 overdue books - the sign of a wonderful writer -
It's an amazing feeling for me when I have a much better experience reading a book the second time around. Maybe bringing plays into it complicates things, but I just read "A Streetcar Named Desire" and couldn't fathom why it had had no effect on me in college. Of course, I decided that I am a much more mature, aware, multi-faceted person now. That was mostly a good feeling, but also a little sobering, because I want to have respect for my old self. I don't want to be divorced from my experiences.
If an old favorite doesn't do it for me on a current read, I can likewise accept that, but sometimes I am nagged by the feeling that I must not have tried hard enough. There is an element of "If it's not you, it's me," in reading, and all such combinations of attribution, with the book taking the place of another person. There is pressure with a second read when you loved the book the first time. And the same way, I feel pressure when I'm reading anything by a favorite author, worrying that the current book won't live up to the previous ones. I generally like the first books I read by an author best. Sometimes I can't objectively say those books were any better than the later ones, but they have a special place in my heart. There was an excitement with them and an experience of discovery that there couldn't have been with the later books.
So, if we change as people, and don't like some of the same things we did earlier, presumably because we have changed, does that mean that we won't like some of our own earlier writing? It seems this would be much more jarring than maybe not liking someone else's book anymore.