The resurrection of Marcus Aurelius - see Bryan's elegant post here - put me in mind of making a connection with Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean, a philosophical novel set in the golden reign of Marcus Aurelius. Then it struck me that, although I have definitely read it, I remember nothing of it except a kind of vague Aurelian afterglow. In fact, an afterglow is about all that is left to me of many - maybe most - of the books I have read, and, as age advances, less and less of what I read is retained in any solider form. The one thing I liked about Nicholson Baker's U And I was his frank admission that, of the Updike he had read, he remembered very little indeed - and wasn't going to look again to refresh his memory (well, that's how I remember it anyway, and I'm certainly not going to check Baker again).
Does it matter how much we remember of books? Does it matter even if no memory at all is available to our conscious mind? I know I must have read large numbers of books that I don't even remember reading - occasionally I find myself reading one, and realise I'm actually rereading... What I like to think is that the better ones (of the books I do at least remember reading) have left some beneficial trace at a level somewhere just below the conscious, retrievable memory - an afterglow, an aura, a faint fragrance... Or maybe I'm deluding myself?
Heard melodies are sweet.....
ReplyDeleteYou speak truth, Nige, as ever. Yesterday I bought the first Aubrey/Maturin novel by Patrick O'Brian for a friend (I read them all about a decade ago). As I sat in the park reading the first chapter, the same sensation flooded me that I recollected from the first time: The sense of, "Wow, this is gonna be a great read. I already love these characters, this setting, the prose sparkling with the writer's great sense of humor and prodigious knowledge." So of course I'm embarked now on rereading 20-odd books b/c the Aurelian glow is now a fire again.
ReplyDeleteSophie has read these books, Nige. Have you? Excellent, excellent literary historical novels about British naval officers during the Napoleonic Era. And a great deal of naturalism mixed with the action, for one of the main characters is a natural philosopher.
Yes Susan I've read a couple (if I remember rightly) and enjoyed them for all the virtues you list, but somehow I never felt any compulsion to read the lot. Maybe I'll come back to him. As a boy I enjoyed C.S. Forester's Hornblower books - similar territory, but more straightforward, without that sense of inner torment (balanced by the contented peace of the quieter scenes) that I seem to recall from O'Brian...
ReplyDeleteI remember it was David Mamet writing about O'Brian that turned me onto his books. I read the first five or six but, like lots of writers I discover after they were active, I couldn't face the rest.
ReplyDeleteAs to your point, Nige, forgetting is a vital part of reading. I suppose to be otherwise would reveal the horrible contradictions apparent in every fiction.
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ReplyDeleteI used to have a mild addiction to Buddhist self-help books which I read by the yard. All seemed to have been written by a guy called Rinpoche. Can't recall a thing. In one ear and out the other.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I can remember quite well some books I read thirty years ago. I think that's because they are entwined with other memories of what I was doing at the time, so A Handful of Dust and Scoop, for example, actually mean the "Kathmandu Hilton" (as a cheap house was called at the time), while Emma means Cali. We all need a little madeleine to help us, I suspect. I've tried to like O'Brian and I've read about three of his books. There are wonderful passages to be sure, but overall there is something prissy and donnish about them to me. Maybe I should have another go.
To quote 80s classic series Robin of Sherwood, "nothing's ever forgotten". i think each experience is another drop into the cauldron of the self, it subtly alters you, sometimes not so subtly.
ReplyDeletei reread Tolkien a few months ago. Though i enjoyed it, i remembered large sections verbatim, the unfortunate after-effect of reading it 3 times in a row for my MA thesis 7 years ago. i'd have thought 7 years would have been enough of a rest but it seems not.
I can't remember a lot of the specifics when I think of certain books I've read. But what seems to remain intact are how I felt in general about the book/author. Even though I can't remember the story specifically, it is still nice that a fond feeling still remains when thinking of a particular book. This must be similar to Nige's "afterglow."
ReplyDeleteI think one reason to read many books is not necessarily to retain the story/information contained within, but to find those select few works whose words inspire/motivate/fascinate you and to reread these until you fully absorb every nuance and detail of the author's writing and integrate the messages into your daily life, attitude, and way of thinking about things.
ReplyDeleteI've been struggling with the same issue, but I think you've hit the nail on the head here - it's the afterglow that really counts. Great books - both fiction and non-fiction - irreversibly alter the way you see the world around you. Reading Dostoevsky can't help but inform your view of other people's interactions, and Kafka adds a bit of subconscious dread to any interaction with a bureaucratic system - even if you don't remember the names of Josef K.'s interrogators, you're left with the knowledge of such a system's potential indifference to the individual. Unless you read books for the purpose of quoting them at cocktail parties - in which case you may as well memorise Bartlett's - what matters is not how well you've remembered a book, but how it's changed you.
ReplyDeleteHmmmmm...Or is it the drugs and alcohol, dry cleaning chemicals, the fact that at bottom the pose becomes unbearably impossible to maintain? I found a heavily annotated copy of William James' *Pragmatism* not long ago. The comments might just as well have been written by a stranger.
ReplyDeleteOne rule of my life is that I can never go wrong by quoting from George Orwell's essay "Inside the Whale," which explores Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the context of fiction and poetry from 1900-1940 (although hearkening back earlier to Whitman, Poe and others).
ReplyDeleteIn this case, I'm reminded of the following passage:
"When I first opened Tropic of Cancer and saw that it was full of unprintable words, my immediate reaction was a refusal to be impressed. Most people's would be the same, I believe. Nevertheless, after a lapse of time the atmosphere of the book, besides innumerable details, seemed to linger in my memory in a peculiar way. A year later Miller's second book, Black Spring, was published. By this time Tropic of Cancer was much more vividly present in my mind than it had been when I first read it. My first feeling about Black Spring was that it showed a falling-off, and it is a fact that it has not the same unity as the other book. Yet after another year there were many passages in Black Spring that had also rooted themselves in my memory. Evidently these books are of the sort to leave a flavour behind them—books that 'create a world of their own', as the saying goes."
Sadly, it's not just books. Large traces of my life are completely gone, and I lose more every day. Not from any Alzheimers or anything like that. Just getting older and living more. Even precious experiences - my early days with my wife, the first years of my son's life - seem increasingly shadowy and vague. At least books can be reread. I haven't found a way to relive biography.
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