Reading a Different Book

In the previous post, I quoted John Dewey's dictum that a great work of art "has esthetic standing only as the work becomes an experience for a human being." This implies, even assumes, that a work of art or literature might alter its "esthetic standing" on each re-viewing or re-reading. If experience is the measure, a work might prove to be several different works over time and reacquaintance. This seems to be borne out by Dr. Crazy's experience re-reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse:

The experience is bizarre for so many reasons. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage that stood out to me in the past and I can remember what I thought about it (and wrote about it) but where now my interpretation is slightly different, and so I find myself transcribing notes from memory and then adding nuances to those semi-remembered ideas. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage or image that is so clearly crucial to me now but to which I didn't give a second thought on previous readings - as if I'm reading a different book, at some points. It's also bizarre to read this in preparation to teach it - this is a book that I read as a student, and on which I wrote as a student, and coming to it from this vantage point seems foreign. I find myself anticipating student responses - trying to connect the text to other texts we're covering this semester - and so I can't get lost in the book in the way that I remember getting lost in it as a student. Finally, it's bizarre that I don't find the book at all difficult, which was one of the key attractions of it for me when I first read it. I wanted to figure out the puzzle with which I felt it presented me. Now, I no longer feel like it's a puzzle. Now, it just makes sense.

. . .so on this reading, I am in love with this book again, but I'm in love with a different book from the one that I first fell in love with, if that makes any sense.

Makes perfect sense.

Comments

[susan]

What a great testament to re-reading. There are books that I've listed as "read" and yet I've snuck them back into the "to read" pile. Books such as "Watership Down" and "Franny and Zooey" that were read so long ago.

[Will]

I read books that have a higher meaning to me, that have a moral or positive effect on my life. Frequently I'll re-read those books and realize that I should have read it months ago, that it was somehow exactly the thing I needed to help me learn and grow even though I didn't think it would be relevant.

I think that a good book will be so filled with truths that you could read it over and over and never have it totally figured out. After all, we're not perfect.