You have a lot of freedom in reading a book. I’m unable, for some reason, to read books from beginning to end. I have to go to what interests me most in the book. And if I like that, I start going backwards and forwards. And it starts to become a really complicated endeavor of just reading the parts of the books once and not sort of overlapping. I don’t know why I have to sort of re-edit the books myself. I don’t know why I can’t read a prologue and read a first chapter. I mean, if I really love a book I’ll get to them too. For some reason, I usually find them deadly dull, the prologues.
And this:
And my favorite reading of all is the unabridged Boswell’s Life of [Samuel] Johnson. It’s my favorite thing because it’s interesting and has no import or forward narrative momentum. So you’re interested and edified but it doesn’t keep you up at night.
Here is more.
Steve Wright (i think) had a joke about how he started books half way through. Because if it was bad he wasted half as much time. And if it was good and at the end he wished there was more there was.
+1
Two thoughts:
(1) This sounds like an anti-lesson in how to read books quickly.
(2) I think he needs to do a better job of finding books he wants to read, and probably spend less time reading books he thinks he should read. I’ve done this to greater or lesser degrees at various times, and displayed similar behaviors.
“(2) I think he needs to do a better job of finding books he wants to read, and probably spend less time reading books he thinks he should read.”
+10000
“books you should read but don’t want to” generally should be left unread, unless you must for work.
Yeah, I do that , too.
Whit Stillman and I should co-author a self-help book in which we explain our little routines that make us as productive and successful as we are. It would be entitled: “Do the Opposite!”
Sure you can easily skip your way through military history or dip in a biography. Even with a book on economics or sociology or psychology you can storm through it as long as you already know something about the subject. But yer man does not appear to read fiction. I don’t see how this strategy of ‘freedom’ works for good fiction.
Jonah Lehrer has said that when he reads pulp fiction he starts at the end of the book because otherwise he can’t bear the tension. The fact that he reads pulp won’t stop me from hopping my way through his new book once it’s out in paperback.
Maybe the quality of pulp is so bad you have to be careful lest glue in the binding won’t hold and the back falls off before you reach the end.
It’s a strange world we live in. I started blogging only 2 weeks ago and on the 4th or 5th day I whipped out a review of a just-released book (Robert J Shiller) which I admitted not having read. Twice in the post I confessed I had only keyworded the book on a google search engine. Yet now if you google “review finance and the good society” — in the UK at least — my *review* lies fourth on the results page. That amazes me. What does it say about the relationship between internet and books? It taught me one thing — always include the word ‘review’ in your post.
“How to Talk About Books you don’t Read” by Pierre Bayard was recommended once on this site. Its excellent. One of the points was that no one sits down, starts on the first page of a book, plows through to the end, and then remembers everything in the book.
I read every book right from the beginning, in the order that the author meant it to be read. As an author myself, I don’t want people skipping ahead. My words aren’t thrown down at random. Every word, every phrase, every sentence has been deeply considered and precisely placed. If, when beginning a book, I sense that I’m not reading a careful author, I toss the book aside. If I sense that I’m reading a thoughtful craftsperson, I gladly put myself in his or her hands, and follow the prescribed order of thought. Skipper-arounders, I suspect, have control issues — something that would go along with being, say, a film director.
Is the new movie any good?
This disordered reading pattern helps explain his movies. He is the furthest thing from a linear thinker. I’ll never forget that Bible-dancing scene in “Barcelona”. Or the tennis volley exegesis of “The Lady and the Tramp” in “The Last Days of Disco”. It takes a certain type of cognitive profile to come up with offbeat stuff like that!
Comments on this entry are closed.