Books, reading, memory, and worth

I was thinking on writing a few posts along the lines of authors I wish were more popular, or books that shook my world or my favourite thrillers when I came up against that horrible hurdle of lost memory. How can it be that a book that meant so much to me figured so little in my contemporary memory? And that had me thinking about this recent interview with Pierre Bayard in the New York Times. See part of it below:

Which leads you to ask: If we read a book and forget that we read it, is that the same as never having read it? I think between reading and nonreading there is an indeterminate space that is quite important, a space where you have books you have skimmed, books you have heard about and books you have forgotten. You don’t have to feel guilty about it.

But what about those of us who read to feel things — to experience pleasure, an end to loneliness? Of course I read in order to feel something. And to feel an end to my loneliness, of course, just as you.

Then why are you so willing to devalue the experience of close reading in favor of skimming? You seem to believe that knowing a little bit about 100 literary classics is preferable to knowing one book intimately. I think a great reader is able to read from the first line to the last line; if you want to do that with some books, it’s necessary to skim other books. If you want to fall in love with someone, it’s necessary to meet many people. You see what I mean?

In regards to remembering, here’s another question. If you do not remember a book, does it matter that you’ve read it? I think it does. I think that while it does some good for a book to live on in one’s head and resonate over time, even if it enriches your world for just the time you are reading and perhaps some very short time after, it contributes to your life. (I really have to say this because otherwise I have thrown away a pretty substantial portion of my life). I think books are like food except it is quite obvious that you can live without them and many do.

I may not remember the meal I had yesterday but it lives on in my body. It gives me strength for some time to come. It forms part of the basis on which I taste everything to come. And if it is a really good meal (or a really mixed metaphor), the peace of mind and hum of that small island of pleasure, like a canoe pushed into the water, keeps going even after the hand withdraws.

Of course, now that I want to write about those books long forgotten I will have to leaf through the copies I have and curse my limitations for the ones I don’t. I have found that even if the mind is a little blank about the book, there is usually something small, and if you start reading it again, the story fills in quickly enough. I’ve had those times where, and this might be more common with obsessive mystery readers, I wasn’t sure I had read a book, and about a chapter in I realize I did, and all too often, remembered it wasn’t all that good.

Perhaps the most frustrating is when you have read a book that was remarkable in every sense except that it left no impression whatsoever on your grey matter. (And I remember all too well some really substandard works).

I do have a few books I reread. These tend to be not for the story, though story there must be, but more for the language. I reread Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex every few years because it manages to be both a parody and a homage, a sly wink at the Arthurian legend by someone who obviously loves them intensely. I reread The Third Policeman also for the language, and Fup. In each case, these are writers barely holding on to the paper, so full of excitement are they at the goings on, and the wonder of the language that swirls around the events.

I think it must come down to how you are reading in the first place. I think I read a little like I find my way through strange places. I tend not to keep track of where I have been but try to just keep moving forward. Kind of like being a passenger in the car; leave the memory to the driver. Unfortunately every now and then you get stranded, or someone asks you for directions to the place you just came from, and you end up idiot for the day.