How to Read a Complicated Book

An old friend suggested I read René Girard, so I got a copy of The Girard Reader from the public library. This was almost two weeks ago, and I'm still trying to figure out a strategy for reading it. He said it wouldn't be hard reading, but the foundational essay in the collection is titled "Mimesis and Violence" and the editor of the collection says it is "essential reading for the beginner in Girard's work." Look at this first sentence from the essay:

"If you survey the literature on imitation, you will quickly discover that acquisition and appropriation are never included among the modes of behavior that are likely to be imitated."

Now, immediately I have to look up both mimesis and appropriation, having some sense of what they mean, but being yet unsure of their dictionary meanings. The idea of appropriation comes up all the time in any kind of cultural study.

The statement I just made about appropriation though, I realize, is something I've assumed because I've come across it in discussions of race and gender. Do you notice that while you may not quite know what appropriation means, and I don't quite know what appropriation means, that doesn't usually stop either of us from using the word authoritatively anyway? If you're the kind of person who likes to participate in intellectual-type (or scholarly) conversations, that is?

And only now does it occur to me to offer this caution: I'm mapping out a thought process to show the way a mind works when working with material it doesn't comprehend. I ask you only now not to let the language scare you off, or the concepts because the point of what I'm writing isn't them. I say this when it is probably already too late, and I expect that I've scared most of my readers away already.

I look up these two words (mimesis and appropration) in The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism only because I have it handy on my desk where I write. A regular dictionary would do for this purpose just as well, if not better. The reference book I am using is much scarier and more intimidating than an ordinary dictionary, but it does the job too. Mimesis is imitation. Appropriation is taking something, an idea, a concept, a tool, and using it for your own purposes, usually without permission.

This is about as far as I got two weeks ago when I picked the book up. I read the first several pages, and while the language was complex the meaning was reasonably clear, but I did not continue to read it. Other things came up. I skittered away from Girard in favor of David Dark, whose book The Gospel According to America I only barely understood, but all the same, was unable to put down.

In order to read Girard, I suspect I need a copy of this book to underline and write in. I need a copy that doesn't have to be returned in 3 to 6 weeks, because I expect it will take much longer than that for me to read it. And I need to commit to it, because a book like this requires commitment, unless I find to my surprise that, like the David Dark, I don't wish to put it down.

I was inspired to write this little essay before 8:00 in the morning, which is what I find happening most often these days. In the middle of the last paragraph or so I tended to my two year old, who fell off the sofa, and is crying again, this time over something his four year old brother has done. I've also kissed my husband goodbye for the morning. I'm just a mom. A mom who does this because she can't help herself, is compelled to, and because I think it is going to make me better somehow. Keep reading. They won't all be like this one.