tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post5907164194561491908..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: The Pleasures of Rereading and Where They Come FromKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-6205465667455860152015-05-20T05:56:55.868-04:002015-05-20T05:56:55.868-04:00To whom it may concern:
I used to revisit a coupl...To whom it may concern:<br /><br />I used to revisit a couple of authors like R.Pirsig, V.Jankelevitch, T.Parsons, H.Hesse, G.M.Tamas, M.Foucault some 2X per year. <br />Now that was mentioned the case of "revisiting" a book, an author or what not, only in (my) imagination, I begin to wonder if that's not the only way that you can "experience" something (someone). Of course it can be argued that experience can come somewhere in the middle, between the thing, situation, event, fact and the one that "registers" the experience, between a supposed subject and a sought for object.<br />Blessed are those who can only read, experience, imagine in the absence of the drive to revisit that "place" as the same (the case of not returning of the same).<br />And talking about a fine brew of psychology, "revisit-ing the initial experience" of reading, loving, dying is possible, among other things for the complex reason of hardwiring it into the brain. <br />The neuromuscular pathways are there for the skilled experiencer to activate them.<br />That doesn't mean that thing outside us cannot trigger the same experience. Why? Simply framed because similar experiences tend to orbit around the same nucleus of meaning/-s, feelings,thoughts etc. <br />I'm still advocating a take on human life of brain plus mind - although i think it is awfully tiring to cling to a horizon of subjectivity in which the body is absent, or no moreR. Mereuţănoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-79371772003599889312015-05-02T18:23:53.956-04:002015-05-02T18:23:53.956-04:00Thank you for your comment, Justin. I think you...Thank you for your comment, Justin. I think you're right in that the emotional engagement is primary if a story is to incorporate itself into the fabric of one's experience, imagination, or memory. Because of that important level of engagement, which we can't meaningfully consciously control, could it be said, perhaps in a reversal of the Nabokov quote that Jim cites above, that "one cannot reread a book, only read it", at least in the sense that you can always reread a book, but never revisit the initial experience of reading it. Rebecca Wells Joplinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09485890436841556217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-59079865445010650412015-04-19T14:31:15.670-04:002015-04-19T14:31:15.670-04:00I must admit, I find it difficult to reread a book...I must admit, I find it difficult to reread a book. Though I can see myself in agreement with the comment by Lewis, I must assert the emotional response to a story is the catalyst for the intellectual response. I find, the quality inside books which prompt a "deeper imagination", are stories which find their way into one's life. By this I mean, if a person intuitively draws connections between their life and a story they've read, the book holds sway over their imagination. I prefer referencing over rereading. Justinhttp://genrerift.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-79299429424473591922015-04-02T22:10:57.615-04:002015-04-02T22:10:57.615-04:00Thank you for your comment, Radu-loan Mereuta. It ...Thank you for your comment, Radu-loan Mereuta. It IS a weird idea. I wouldn't call it a prediction, just a wondering, really. I suppose before the advent of writing if one person had told another that instead of hearing and enjoying a wonderful story from the lips of a storyteller, that she might one day be able to sit all alone before a section of compressed bits of plant fiber and somehow know a story in its entirety, experiencing all the emotions attendant thereon, everyone would have thought it some very strange futuristic scenario indeed. I really like David Deutsch's insistence on the fact that we cannot know the future from our vantage point -- period. But imagining... that's another case entirely.Rebecca Wells Joplinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09485890436841556217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-70368809314987985652015-04-01T14:19:45.399-04:002015-04-01T14:19:45.399-04:00Odd coming from someone who still enjoy reading, R...Odd coming from someone who still enjoy reading, Rebecca, and i sure hope that your forecasting for (re-)reading habit will prove not true.Rah.duMere.utachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00440085707213232962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-5038142957461115272015-01-24T17:46:08.478-05:002015-01-24T17:46:08.478-05:00Thank you for your thoughts on rereading and relis...Thank you for your thoughts on rereading and relistening, Jim. I very much agree with your sentiments. Readers do often miss the “clever stuff”. In reflecting on this, it seems to me that the deeper the ideas and the more skilled the expression of those ideas, the more I go back to a work, and that’s true across genres. For example, I regularly reread some authors -- Donald Harman Akenson (historian), David Deutsch (physicist), Karl Popper (philosopher), Keith Stanovich (psychologist), and the novelists Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and Marilynne Robinson – just because I very much enjoy being in their brilliant thinking space. And, I agree, there are so many authors and good works out there to read. I’ve sometimes wondered how humans will even come to choose a novel to read the first time, once the inventory is in the hundred of millions or billions. But of course by that time there may be some way of uploading a work that doesn't involve reading, or rereading, at all.Rebecca Wells Joplinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09485890436841556217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-28106136057413390842015-01-24T06:27:21.555-05:002015-01-24T06:27:21.555-05:00“One cannot read a book: one can only reread it,” ...“One cannot read a book: one can only reread it,” Nabokov said. Surprised you missed that one. I’m rereading a book at the moment. It’s one of my own admittedly. I’m editing it, copyediting it; the story’s sound enough but it needs all the hyphens excised and I don’t think there’s a page without the word ‘seems’ on it. I haven’t looked at the book in years which is a habit I’ve got into and not a bad one if you can be patient enough. I don’t reread many books other than my own but there have been a few I first read when I was young—and clearly was too young to fully appreciate—that I’ve taken a second look at, Nabokov being one of them. The reason I don’t reread more is because there are so many authors, so many great authors, whom I’ve never read anything by—it’s an embarrassingly long list—and so a book would really need to be something for me to take time out to read it again. I wish I did have the time because so many of the books I’m reading at the moment deserve to be read a second time, in fact when I write my reviews this is something I often comment on as a good thing that a book could be read more than once, that once really isn’t enough. Films I often watch more than once—must’ve watched <i>Blade Runner</i> six or seven times—and there’s a <i>good</i> reason for that. On a first viewing—and this applies equally to books so let’s include ‘on a first read’—you’re only going to get the gist; the fine detail is going to wash over you. I read articles on films all the time and am continually amazed by what I’ve missed. Take a film like <i>Airplane</i>. I must’ve seen that film three or four times and every time I noticed something new. Well books are exactly the same. We miss all the clever stuff. We might has well watch a TV or film adaptation and be done with it. And even then we’d most likely miss a lot. I’ve heard musicians talk about rehearsing a new piece. At first they’re focused on their own part exclusively and it’s not until they’ve got it licked they can sit back as it were and actually listen to the music.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com