It was a dreary Saturday afternoon and I had idly flipped open X (Twitter) to see what might be of interest. At that particular moment, at the top of my feed was a post from Tim Spalding of LibraryThing. Tim had been irritated by something he’d read in The Paris Review; he was scornfully dismissing the essay, Against Re-Reading, by Australian writer and journalist Oscar Schwartz. Tim had read it and then re-read it twice, trying to try to grasp the author’s point. Other readers shared Tim’s disdain.
Schwartz writes that one should never read the same book twice. The ideal experience in reading is one he likens to that of experiencing sexual orgasm. There should be such an “immediacy, intensity, and complete surrender involved in the initial experience” that any second experience of the text would be a disservice.
His essay explains that multiple readings of a single book represent too cautious an approach to life, one too conservative because it insists on holding onto the past, only enjoyable by those craving dull stability. The educational practice of rereading classic novels only solidifies the base of a pre-existing literary canon. Rereading is appropriate when training graduate students, nothing more. One runs the risk of becoming bored. Life is short. Again, to quote him, “the same end awaits us all”.
To which my response is to snort rudely and refer Schwartz to Oscar Wilde, (The original quote in context may be found in Wilde’s essay – “The Decay of Lying”, Intentions, 1891).
Schwartz isn’t some unknown freelancer; he has a certain presence. He has written for The Guardian and for The New York Times as well as The Paris Review. He gave a Ted Talk in 2015, related to his own research regarding the use of artificial intelligence in creating poetry. He was a participant in developing the 2018 AI Now Institute report. (An explanatory note from that report: The AI Now Institute at New York University is an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to understanding the social implications of AI technologies.)
But what he says in Against Rereading is that the reading he did at age 10 of Bryan Courtenay’s adult novel, The Power of One, will remain his sole engagement with that text. The details that he retains about the plot and the substance of the book are of less consideration than the memory of how the book affected him initially. His personal emotional response he views as being of greater importance than any author’s narrative of inhumane abuse.
He quotes from Patricia Meyer Spacks’ book, On Rereading (Harvard University Press, 2011), but primarily to express dismay that “by all this painstaking reconsideration she has lost access to that specific type of youthful wisdom and intensity we bring to bear when we read something the first time.” He rejects the idea that one might find equal value by revisiting the experience and encountering all that was missed the first time ‘round.
Given Schwartz’ statement, I assume he will never go back and reread Spacks’ book. That is a pity. Because I think he missed a significant sentence or two:
To reread celebrates the act of reading. Returning to a work read in the past, no matter what feeling or judgment attended the original meeting of book and mind, declares important the process of encountering and coming to terms with a text.
In her book, Spacks also notes that “Rereading is exploring new ground-new ground in familiar territory. By the criterion of pleasure, it ranks high; and its evocation of fresh meanings gives it weight also as a source of instruction.”
Just because one can’t perfectly replicate a break-through experience of formative sensation is no reason to forego ever again engaging in a behavior. To use his logic and his own metaphor, that would suggest that a single satisfying act of coitus should only be experienced once in a lifetime, Because you can’t ensure that you will experience the identical moment of climax – the immediacy, intensity and complete surrender. You should enjoy it just the one time.
I’ve read Spacks’ book more than once. Her wisdom in On Rereading extends further:
The layers of experience accruing from early readings, partly erased, remain partially discernible. Each new layer both adds to and subtracts from what has gone before. It subtracts in obscuring old reactions by new ones; it adds new responses to those still remembered.
The position adopted by Schwartz in his essay is overly precious in a less frequently used sense of that word. It’s an affectation and therefore lacking in authenticity. If he adheres to the philosophy expressed, he misses out on the development of a deeper (albeit a different) formation of self. Can a ten-year-old’s reading truly be the best, the most authentic reading?
My issue is that by avoiding a second reading, he avoids the recognition of the complexity of language and the use of one’s language to communicate a greater understanding of the real world. He writes too well for me to believe him unaware of this aspect of working with words, but by avoiding a second or third engagement with a text, he limits the chance that he might experience growth in a different direction. He wants to hold on to his memory of a reading full of “youthful vigor and intensity”.
He isn’t arguing for a more authentic interpretation of reading material. He is arguing that it is appropriate to leave one’s initial understanding at a base level. That it is better to avoid any new insight that might annoyingly emerge. He doesn’t want to have an expanded understanding of what the Other has experienced. There need not be a better grasp of another’s expression of life lived. In his view, regardless of whether a reader is attuned to the author’s subject, writing style, etc., it is the first impression of a work that is central.
His sister was right; he lacked the maturity to meet the work he claims to revere so deeply. It may have opened up a new possibility in his head, but not more than that. As he says himself in the essay, Schwartz isn’t sure that he recalls correctly the details of what he read. His very neutral summarization registers no emotional response to the actual narrative of horrific abuse expressed in The Power of One. His response is incomplete.
There has been no connection, no absorption, no shared meaning. He “felt” something that night under the covers, but he doesn’t (even now) recognize what it was that he may have been missing. (Shades of When Harry met Sally.)
One should be careful in setting the bar of expectation, but let me say this. Reading (just like sexual intercourse) should be a mind-blowing experience. Schwartz had a memorable experience at the age of ten; I do not deny that. And any decision to read or to reread belongs ultimately to the individual. But his essay, his philosophy, overlooks the critical point that there is something greater, something deeper and more complex that ought to be involved. Properly enacted, both activities demand attentiveness to the experience of the other human being present in order to form that soul-bending connection.
Discussion
9 Thoughts on "Sex and the Serious Reader"
As someone who has read Pride and Prejudice twice, and Anna Karenina twice, among a number of other books, I strongly agree with Jill’s statement: “If he adheres to the philosophy expressed, he misses out on the development of a deeper (albeit a different) formation of self.” I often read a book too fast just to get to the end of the story. The initial elation of finishing a good story does not diminish the second time around. In fact, it can increase. The second reading allows me to breath into the story, the language, the style, and the meaning. Not only do I have more insight into the development of the characters (or lack thereof), I might equate their experience with my own. In fact, literature often allows me to articulate what I myself have not been able to, yet nonetheless feel deeply. As Jill writes: “My issue is that by avoiding a second reading, he avoids the recognition of the complexity of language and the use of one’s language to communicate a greater understanding of the real world.” So true. Now, perhaps I only crave “dull stability”. After all, I have watched countless reruns of Law & Order for the simple pleasure of predictability, and besides, I rarely remembering the ending. So, perhaps my memory is not as good as Schwartz’s. I’ll refrain from further comment on the sex analogy, since that’s better joked about over a beer with a known audience.
I read The Handmaid’s Tale when I was 11. If I had never re-read it — if, say, my Grade 12 English teacher hadn’t assigned it as a class text, or if I hadn’t re-read it before seeing a production of the Poul Rouders opera, or if I hadn’t re-read it again to verify the legitimacy of my annoyance with the 1990 film — I would have no idea how much my 11-year-old self missed.
Reading a book for the very first time is a unique, unrepeatable experience! But so is re-reading that book, because just as a book is different for every reader, the reader experiences the book differently every time.
And if you don’t enjoy a book the second time as much as you enjoyed it the first time, that, too, is an experience that has something to tell you.
Hasn’t everyone had the experience of reading a book and not understanding/hating it and then read it again when older and understanding where the author was coming from? Also, there are some books that are just comfort reads, warm reads like hugs, that one wants to read again when one is in that mood. Of course, maybe that is only true if one reads a lot. If one only reads a new book once in a while there may be no room to reread one already consumed.
I used to reread King Lear every fall, as a celebration because I still think of the start of the school year as the start of the year. Every time there were new aspects to my reading brought about because I had changed, or the world had changed – new readings of Lear because my parents were growing older, because I was growing older, because the world around me was posing questions about authority and where the legitimacy of government comes from, or what it means to be loyal to a flawed authority. The idea that my very first reading of Lear would have been the only legitimate reading, or the only one that could provide me with any meaning or insight, is odd, to say the least.
The distinction “writer and journalist” is marvelous! It sounds like Schwartz deserves it.
I won’t read Schwartz even once, and so my comment is likely way off the mark, but first, I suspect he is “trolling,” disingenuously positing a thesis so absurd that it commands attention, as it does here. Second, reading isn’t *like* a sexual experience. It *is* a sexual experience. I don’t mean all varieties of reading. Reading online, reading most (but not all) user’s manuals, reading the back of a cereal box: none of these engages the reader’s–make that *this* reader’s–libidinous energies. But reading a book of poetry, a novel, a serious work of non-fiction and the like most definitely tickles me in certain ways.
A little to the left, please. That’s it!
I hadn’t registered Schwartz’s existence before this piece, and feel that has not been a negative in my life. He strikes me as a shallow person and one who would rather, as Dean notes above, “troll” and provoke instead of engaging and learning. I also pity his partners in sex and in life, as the man obviously won’t give them any more time and understanding than he gives a book.
Jill’s well-managed husband here. While I am in no way the voracious reader she is, there are many works, of both fiction and non-fiction, of serious genre and of light ephemera, that I have read numerous times in my life. I first encountered “Have Space Suit Will Travel” by Robert A. Heinlein when I was 12. I re-read it at least six times between that age and 30. (Which reminds me–I should pick it up again.) “To Kill a Mockingbird” was a 7th-grade assigned reading; I have gone back to it every five or six years since. I try to look over “A Christmas Carol” every holiday season. On the non-fiction side, I have read all of Stephen Jay Gould’s essay collections on paleontology at least twice.
I’ve learned something new about all of those titles each time. I expect to learn something new the next time I read one of them. Re-reading is, to me, the mark of a truly well-read individual.
I like this comment. It reminds me that I read To the Lighthouse twice in succession in college, because I couldn’t get enough. (See my comment up-thread.) It also triggers the De Manian side of my critical devotions. If one can’t in fact read at all, then one need never fret about the risks of re-reading!
I could not agree more, Jill. “Snort rudely” sums up nicely my own response to Mr. Swartz’s comments.
