Guest Blog: The Pleasures of Re-reading

Readers of this blog may remember my 2/16/10 post about “reading friends,” in which I particularly focused on my longtime, extremely well-read, dear friend C., with whom I have had my “best, longest running, most continuous book conversation” over a period of 39 years. In honor of that long conversation, and because I value her opinions so much, I invited C. to write a guest blog entry or two, and she kindly agreed, contributing two posts under the joint title of “Still Reading After All These Years.” Today, I am honored and pleased to post her first entry, on “The Pleasures of Re-reading,” below; her second guest post will follow tomorrow.

C.:
"I started out thinking I'd write about re-reading books I read forty years ago. But time is ever the trickster; it's actually more than forty years ago. Among the books I've re-read recently are books I read in college -- in 1968, that year of exhilarating and tragic turmoil. Three, in particular. First, Emily Dickinson. I don't know what was more radical: the teacher, who at that point was the only English Department faculty member who showed up to teach in a suit and tie, or his statement to the lounging crowd of bored students that he intended to prove to us that Emily Dickinson was the greatest American poet of all time. Unheard of, and indeed, ridiculous at that time. But that is also exactly what he proceeded to do. I am still grateful every time I find myself leafing through my Emily. Second, Joseph Conrad, and "Heart of Darkness" in particular. The overwhelming richness of the language, the lush pairings of adjectives and nouns. As I re-read, I kept dropping the book so I could jot down those wonderful phrases in my haiku notebook. And finally, Herman Melville. "Moby Dick." Reading it was a thrill -- again. I walked through beautiful woods, I swam through beautiful corals, the pathways still familiar, beauty re-revealed and renewed. With a thrill, I remembered individual sentences, while also remembering the thrill I felt reading them the first time. In a world where we're often overwhelmed and so much seems to slip away from us, it is pure pleasure to realize the power of literature and memory."