I always have strange thoughts while putting Parker to bed. Often they have to do with that incomplete in Theory of the Novel I still have to make up; usually these are strategies for writing it that make a lot of sense right up until the moment I leave my son's room. Tonight I was thinking about modes of interaction with texts.
Question: What do you mean when you say you have "read" something?
Once upon a time I had this great memory. I remembered things I had read, where I had read them, what they were about. I remember one time discussing A Separate Peace with my friend Joy over the phone, years after I had actually read the book for class. We talked about what the book was really about at its core. I can't do that anymore. I barely remember the plot of the Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross) I read four months ago.
I finished Reflections on the Psalms this afternoon. I read it fast because I needed to read something quickly after spending so many months on Orthodoxy. Now I want to go back and simmer in it for a while, absorb Lewis's insights into secondary meanings. I've read the book, but I don't feel like I can say that I have really read it, because I did not give the book the sort of textual interaction it deserves.
Ben Talmadge said (hopefully he'll correct me if I get this wrong) that he can barely enjoy a movie unless he can journal fifteen pages about it later. I can hardly bear to summarize an essay paragraph by paragraph. While putting Parker to bed I thought--crazy thoughts about writing and writing and writing as I read, because writing clears so many things up for me. Writing helps me work out things I don't understand, posit answers where I have questions, answers that actually make some measure of sense. It help me figure out what I really think about another person's ideas. For some reason I find this very difficult to do without writing.
I wonder if this is why so much of what I read is ultimately lost on me. But then, could I, would I ever stand to do it?
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