I suppose I ought to pause long enough to note that although the placement of the apostrophe is unusual, it does reflect my intention. This post is about my father specifically. It is about me as a father only indirectly. It isn't really bout fathers in general at all.
In 1985, Mother called to tell me that Dad had died and to ask me to represent the family in a reflection on Dad's life. That was a wonderful feeling for me. It was demanding, yet at the same time, I felt that it was something I could do. Best of all, it wasn't about me. It was a service I could provide for my family and for those who had known Dad.
Today's task is, frankly, more daunting. I do not have the sense that this is something I can do. I am going to try to provide a hypertext link to the celebration of Dad's life. On the reasonable likelihood that this first try will not work out well, I would like specifically to exculpate my son Dan, who as a kind of Father's Day present to me has gotten me this far, and my nephew Steve Hayes, who took time he didn't have to help someone he hasn't actually known since he was a little boy.
Having said all that, click here to see the tribute to my father's life, a document now 25 years old.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Beyond
I've been thinking about the "beyond" claim. I guess the context that comes first to mind is political argumentation. Consider these two book titles. I haven't looked them up, so for all I know they may be actual titles. First, Beyond Liberalism. Second, Beyond Conservatism. The first title is supposed to attract conservatives, particularly, I suspect, conservatives who were once liberal or conservatives who attended a liberal university and are still pissed about it. The second title is supposed to attract liberals, by the same mechanism.
The presupposition is that there is a linear development of some kind. Liberalism is here, but there is something wrong with it. It is internally contradictory. It is morally unsatisfying. It is impractical; it is expensive. It is NOT, however, a step on the road to communism. "Beyond" at least takes the "step on the road" argument away. Maybe we could picture it as the town you reach at the end of a long day and discover that there are no rooms available. That's what's wrong with it. So "what's beyond Citrus Springs?" becomes a pertinent and wearisome question. In Pleasantville, the movie I love and hate alternately, the outsider's question, "What's beyond Pleasantville?" is treated as a joke because there literally is not anything beyond Pleasantville.
But if anyone wrote Beyond Feminism, the author doesn't think much of feminism. Just to keep the pronoun's straight, let's make it a woman author. She thinks that feminism is...oh, I'll just look up the page a little...feminism is internally contradictory or morally unsatisfying, or impractical, or expensive (this would be in societal terms, I suppose). So we need to move "beyond" it. And the development is linear. So all we need to know is what is beyond feminism, in what sense it is "beyond," and what other valuable things do we have to give up to get there? Probably we are not going to find out those things.
It is just as reasonable to declare that feminism is the end, the very highest point, of the scale of development. Any criticism you might encounter about feminism is, therefore, an imperfect version of it. The practice that is being criticized is inadequate because it "falls short of" feminism. As a practical matter, the difficulty may be not either "falls short" or "goes beyond," but it may be on another value axis entirely. That, I regret to say, is a topic for another day.
The great thing about Marx's historical determinism is that he puts the whole mechanism and all the stages and the certain endpoint all on the page at the same time. When he says that socialism is "beyond" capitalism, you know exactly what he means. It's linear...well, dialectical...development and capitalism is here and as you leave it behind, you get to socialism. Woohoo!
I think that "beyond," without all that careful setting up, really doesn't mean anything at all. Well...I suppose it means that the writer doesn't like it. But we should all be beyond that by now, don't you think?
The presupposition is that there is a linear development of some kind. Liberalism is here, but there is something wrong with it. It is internally contradictory. It is morally unsatisfying. It is impractical; it is expensive. It is NOT, however, a step on the road to communism. "Beyond" at least takes the "step on the road" argument away. Maybe we could picture it as the town you reach at the end of a long day and discover that there are no rooms available. That's what's wrong with it. So "what's beyond Citrus Springs?" becomes a pertinent and wearisome question. In Pleasantville, the movie I love and hate alternately, the outsider's question, "What's beyond Pleasantville?" is treated as a joke because there literally is not anything beyond Pleasantville.
But if anyone wrote Beyond Feminism, the author doesn't think much of feminism. Just to keep the pronoun's straight, let's make it a woman author. She thinks that feminism is...oh, I'll just look up the page a little...feminism is internally contradictory or morally unsatisfying, or impractical, or expensive (this would be in societal terms, I suppose). So we need to move "beyond" it. And the development is linear. So all we need to know is what is beyond feminism, in what sense it is "beyond," and what other valuable things do we have to give up to get there? Probably we are not going to find out those things.
It is just as reasonable to declare that feminism is the end, the very highest point, of the scale of development. Any criticism you might encounter about feminism is, therefore, an imperfect version of it. The practice that is being criticized is inadequate because it "falls short of" feminism. As a practical matter, the difficulty may be not either "falls short" or "goes beyond," but it may be on another value axis entirely. That, I regret to say, is a topic for another day.
The great thing about Marx's historical determinism is that he puts the whole mechanism and all the stages and the certain endpoint all on the page at the same time. When he says that socialism is "beyond" capitalism, you know exactly what he means. It's linear...well, dialectical...development and capitalism is here and as you leave it behind, you get to socialism. Woohoo!
I think that "beyond," without all that careful setting up, really doesn't mean anything at all. Well...I suppose it means that the writer doesn't like it. But we should all be beyond that by now, don't you think?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Michael Chabon on being Jewish
Michael Chabon wrote a piece for the New York Times on "being Jewish" as part of the backwash caused by the recent interdiction of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza. It is classic Chabon. You can see The Yiddish Policemen's Union all over it. When I saw that the next day's New York Times brought seven letters in response, I decided to play with Chabon and his respondents a game I play in my upper division classes at PSU. The game is: read the responses first and form the best idea you can of what the original article must have been about. THEN you read the article. Playing the game was pleasant, as always, and enlightening, as usual.
Chabon's major point was that the notion is maintained by scanning over the Jews you know, counting the best ones as "typical" and passing over the others. You learn not to see, he says, the blockheaded Jews who are so bountifully available and to see the best, the most accomplished, as typical. That is how Jewish kids are taught that Jews are special.
Even Chabon did not attempt to reflect on how the notion of Jewish exceptionalism got started, much less whether it is justified. He did say that Israel's ability as a nation to stay in play this deep into history was a matter of luck, not of merit.
No one responded to his thesis. None of the seven. He might as well have written a piece inviting readers to submit "your thoughts about Israel and Jews." It was like the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club, in which a group of people get together to discuss one after another of the Austen novels, only to have each meeting, one after another, highjacked by the host for purposes of her own.
Of the seven, I found my heart going out to the writer who gave what I thought was the wittiest response. He said it was true, as Chabon argued, that "Jews" are not exceptional, but who is going to explain that to his 82 year old mother? Denying and affirming Chabon's thesis in the same few words.
Chabon's major point was that the notion is maintained by scanning over the Jews you know, counting the best ones as "typical" and passing over the others. You learn not to see, he says, the blockheaded Jews who are so bountifully available and to see the best, the most accomplished, as typical. That is how Jewish kids are taught that Jews are special.
Even Chabon did not attempt to reflect on how the notion of Jewish exceptionalism got started, much less whether it is justified. He did say that Israel's ability as a nation to stay in play this deep into history was a matter of luck, not of merit.
No one responded to his thesis. None of the seven. He might as well have written a piece inviting readers to submit "your thoughts about Israel and Jews." It was like the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club, in which a group of people get together to discuss one after another of the Austen novels, only to have each meeting, one after another, highjacked by the host for purposes of her own.
Of the seven, I found my heart going out to the writer who gave what I thought was the wittiest response. He said it was true, as Chabon argued, that "Jews" are not exceptional, but who is going to explain that to his 82 year old mother? Denying and affirming Chabon's thesis in the same few words.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Playing the Enemy
I just finished reading the part of Playing the Enemy I was interested in. My librarian wife shook her head sadly, more from force of habit than from any real grief. I was so delighted by the movie, Invictus, and it wasn't until the second viewing that I noticed it was based on a book by John Carlin. But the book really is bigger than the movie. There is a great deal in it about Nelson Mandela's courtship of his jailers, and his political opponents, and the South African Rugby Association.
The next time I read this book, I will probably start at the beginning and read it all. If I do, it will be because that new material is now the material I am in contact with. I can presume the World Cup of 1995, which is when the South African rugby team "played the enemy" and go on to the new material that is now right next door. Had I begun at the beginning, it would have been two doors away—too far-- and I probably would not have finished the book.
I recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in reconciliation in any larger social setting. If the leadership of my church, for instance, were to stop whatever it is doing and read this book--just the part about the game--they would return to their work with a renewed sense of what is possible and what is might cost. Worse things could happen.
The next time I read this book, I will probably start at the beginning and read it all. If I do, it will be because that new material is now the material I am in contact with. I can presume the World Cup of 1995, which is when the South African rugby team "played the enemy" and go on to the new material that is now right next door. Had I begun at the beginning, it would have been two doors away—too far-- and I probably would not have finished the book.
I recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in reconciliation in any larger social setting. If the leadership of my church, for instance, were to stop whatever it is doing and read this book--just the part about the game--they would return to their work with a renewed sense of what is possible and what is might cost. Worse things could happen.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
New words are the fresh blood of a language. It's nice to have fresh blood. But it would be nice if it were healthy, rather than diseased blood. And it would be nice if it were not added at a rate that makes it difficult to assimilate it and get it circulating usefully. I also like new words, partly because I make them up myself, from time to time, and I need some kind of cover for doing that. And I realize that there are even better reasons than that for having them. I can "sync" my computer and my iPod in a way that has nothing at all to do with time. "Synchronize" still has that chron- in the middle, but "sync" doesn't need it any more. All is well.
However, I would not put a sticker on my car that said NEW WORDS ARE GOOD. For one thing, if you make new ones instead of using the old ones carefully, it gets harder and harder to say some things that really need to be said. I do have an example in mind, but for now, ask yourself why the expression "data points" had to be invented. Or why a sickly spinach plant would be said to be "healthy" on the grounds that it is good for you. Well. Enough of that.
I would like to write soon about pleasures; about "delights," more specifically, since delights are at the heart of being a dilettante. I would like to talk about significant and insignificant delights and I would like those words to refer to delights that signify--they act as signs of or that point toward--something and to delights that are attended to not because of their significance, but because they are there and they are delightful. That's what I'd like to do. I can't, of course, because "significant" is now most likely to be understood to mean "important." But I don't want to say "important" so I have to use a different word. I find that very trying.
However, I would not put a sticker on my car that said NEW WORDS ARE GOOD. For one thing, if you make new ones instead of using the old ones carefully, it gets harder and harder to say some things that really need to be said. I do have an example in mind, but for now, ask yourself why the expression "data points" had to be invented. Or why a sickly spinach plant would be said to be "healthy" on the grounds that it is good for you. Well. Enough of that.
I would like to write soon about pleasures; about "delights," more specifically, since delights are at the heart of being a dilettante. I would like to talk about significant and insignificant delights and I would like those words to refer to delights that signify--they act as signs of or that point toward--something and to delights that are attended to not because of their significance, but because they are there and they are delightful. That's what I'd like to do. I can't, of course, because "significant" is now most likely to be understood to mean "important." But I don't want to say "important" so I have to use a different word. I find that very trying.
A little soteriology, after some verbal playing around
I don't think it will take me long to establish my credentials as a dilettante. This morning, I am going to collect evidence for the existence of a hitherto unknown family of Northwest woodpeckers, the the Cyranophagidae. I will put the picture on the blog. This evening, I will publish another post on the blog because it is, after all, Saturday evening and I can see a Saturday evening post becoming a tradition here.
A followup on "deep reading." I have nearly finished Playing the Enemy, the book on which the movie, Invictus, was based. I am enjoying the book a good bit and it isn't taking as long to "read" as you might think, because I am reading only the part about which I became curious when I saw the movie. If I get curious about the other half of the book, eventually, I will go back and read it. Eventually.
So. Teriology. Theologians use the word soteriology to refer the doctrine of salvation or to any kind of study that focuses on salvation. If any readers get access to this blog other than the fairly tight group of family and friends, I should probably specify that I am talking about Christian theology, that I am, myself, a Christian, and that I have had no training in theology at all since college.
I wrote an essay earlier this year--I'll post it to this blog if I can find a way to do it--on just what it was about the death of Jesus that provides "atonement," as Christians have claimed since the first century. Actually, that's why we call it the First Century. Writing that essay brought me up against the mystery of it. The near unanimity of Christians that there was an atonement (an at-one-ment with God) contrasts starkly with our inability to say of what character the atonement is or how it was brought about.
Obviously, I am not presenting myself as someone who has "the answer," but I do have a way of looking at it that seems promising to me. The idea is to look at what "live" and "die" mean by contrasting the Atonement and the Fall. If you think of it as a word study and if you eliminate everything between, it is easier.
The story goes that God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the tree at the center of the garden, the tree I call (whimsically) "the Tree of Moral Discernment," that they would surely die. The Hebrew there, I have been told, is "you will die die." But the First Lady believed the serpent instead, who told her that she would not die die if she ate the fruit, and further that God's demand that she abstain had been politically motivated. So they both ate. Not she and the serpent; she and her husband.
And they both died. In some way. If we could say in just what way they died, it would be a great help when, skipping everything between, we come to Atonement to say just how Jesus "came to life." We are not paralleling, remember, the death of Adam and the death of Jesus. We are doing what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 15: we are contrasting the death-giving death of Adam with the life-giving death of Jesus. We could say that God created humankind (Adam and Eve)to be spiritually attuned to Him (language note: I use "Him" as a neuter pronoun, as I was taught in elementary school, when gender is not a consideration in a given context; I use the capital H- because I am a monotheist). That "attunement," the one God intended and had counted on, died that day. Adam and Eve as the people God intended them to be that day, died.
Following the trajectory of this comparison, we come now to Jesus. Jesus felt, in the Marcan and Matthean accounts I have been following, completely abandoned by God. He died knowing himself to be a failure. He could very well have sued his Father for non-support. He could have taken the advice Job's wife gave him at what she thought was her husband's bitter end, to "curse God and die." But he didn't. He "lived, lived" at the crucial moment where Adam and Eve chose to "die, die." Where Adam chose disobedience, hoping for equality with God, Jesus chose obedience though God appeared to have failed him entirely.
Luke Timothy Johnson says that the common Pauline phrase pistis Christou may be translated either "the faith OF Christ" or as "faith IN Christ." If we follow the logic that connects the Fall to the atoning work of the cross, I see these as our two options. In the first, we look at the kind of faith Christ showed. We also know that being moved by that faith, Jesus' disciples revolutionized the world. (If you are wondering what happened to the resurrection, remember that we are working from Adam's choice to Christ's.) In the second, we trust that there was something about the death of Jesus that changed the condition of alienation we have endured since Adam. We aren't able to say what that was. We have evolved a series of metaphors that point in different directions: some, for instance, sacrificial, some juridical. But we use metaphors because we don't know how to say it the way an engineer would say it. That failure makes poets of us all.
So the question today is this: if you consider Adam's choice as a movement from union to alienation and Jesus' choice as a movement from alienation to union, does it help us understand what we are talking about when we say that something about the death of Jesus produced "at one ment" with God? It's a question to which everyone will have to produce his or her own answer. I'm not sure what my answer is yet, but I like the approach the question gives us.
A followup on "deep reading." I have nearly finished Playing the Enemy, the book on which the movie, Invictus, was based. I am enjoying the book a good bit and it isn't taking as long to "read" as you might think, because I am reading only the part about which I became curious when I saw the movie. If I get curious about the other half of the book, eventually, I will go back and read it. Eventually.
So. Teriology. Theologians use the word soteriology to refer the doctrine of salvation or to any kind of study that focuses on salvation. If any readers get access to this blog other than the fairly tight group of family and friends, I should probably specify that I am talking about Christian theology, that I am, myself, a Christian, and that I have had no training in theology at all since college.
I wrote an essay earlier this year--I'll post it to this blog if I can find a way to do it--on just what it was about the death of Jesus that provides "atonement," as Christians have claimed since the first century. Actually, that's why we call it the First Century. Writing that essay brought me up against the mystery of it. The near unanimity of Christians that there was an atonement (an at-one-ment with God) contrasts starkly with our inability to say of what character the atonement is or how it was brought about.
Obviously, I am not presenting myself as someone who has "the answer," but I do have a way of looking at it that seems promising to me. The idea is to look at what "live" and "die" mean by contrasting the Atonement and the Fall. If you think of it as a word study and if you eliminate everything between, it is easier.
The story goes that God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the tree at the center of the garden, the tree I call (whimsically) "the Tree of Moral Discernment," that they would surely die. The Hebrew there, I have been told, is "you will die die." But the First Lady believed the serpent instead, who told her that she would not die die if she ate the fruit, and further that God's demand that she abstain had been politically motivated. So they both ate. Not she and the serpent; she and her husband.
And they both died. In some way. If we could say in just what way they died, it would be a great help when, skipping everything between, we come to Atonement to say just how Jesus "came to life." We are not paralleling, remember, the death of Adam and the death of Jesus. We are doing what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 15: we are contrasting the death-giving death of Adam with the life-giving death of Jesus. We could say that God created humankind (Adam and Eve)to be spiritually attuned to Him (language note: I use "Him" as a neuter pronoun, as I was taught in elementary school, when gender is not a consideration in a given context; I use the capital H- because I am a monotheist). That "attunement," the one God intended and had counted on, died that day. Adam and Eve as the people God intended them to be that day, died.
Following the trajectory of this comparison, we come now to Jesus. Jesus felt, in the Marcan and Matthean accounts I have been following, completely abandoned by God. He died knowing himself to be a failure. He could very well have sued his Father for non-support. He could have taken the advice Job's wife gave him at what she thought was her husband's bitter end, to "curse God and die." But he didn't. He "lived, lived" at the crucial moment where Adam and Eve chose to "die, die." Where Adam chose disobedience, hoping for equality with God, Jesus chose obedience though God appeared to have failed him entirely.
Luke Timothy Johnson says that the common Pauline phrase pistis Christou may be translated either "the faith OF Christ" or as "faith IN Christ." If we follow the logic that connects the Fall to the atoning work of the cross, I see these as our two options. In the first, we look at the kind of faith Christ showed. We also know that being moved by that faith, Jesus' disciples revolutionized the world. (If you are wondering what happened to the resurrection, remember that we are working from Adam's choice to Christ's.) In the second, we trust that there was something about the death of Jesus that changed the condition of alienation we have endured since Adam. We aren't able to say what that was. We have evolved a series of metaphors that point in different directions: some, for instance, sacrificial, some juridical. But we use metaphors because we don't know how to say it the way an engineer would say it. That failure makes poets of us all.
So the question today is this: if you consider Adam's choice as a movement from union to alienation and Jesus' choice as a movement from alienation to union, does it help us understand what we are talking about when we say that something about the death of Jesus produced "at one ment" with God? It's a question to which everyone will have to produce his or her own answer. I'm not sure what my answer is yet, but I like the approach the question gives us.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Reading Deep
I'm reasonably sure that "reading deep" is what I want to say and not "reading deeply." There may be a little of Alexander Pope in there as in, "drink deep or touch not the Pierian spring." In any case, I'm probably right and even if I'm not, I can probably justify it at least partially, and even if I can, I like "deep" better.
I'm going to take a breath now.
Everyone who has ever really studied literature has learned ways of deep or "analytical" study. It's a way of getting deep into a piece of literature--into its "essence," you might say. But that's not what I'm talking about. I have two things in mind, both simple.
The first is to contrast reading deep with shallow reading. I mean to imply no value judgments here, but the truth of the matter is that a person who has read 20 books, once each, has had a different reading experience that has a person who has read 5 books, four times each. I do read a lot of different books, but I also read particular books over and over: Lord of the Rings, The Lathe of Heaven, Gaudy Night, Bedtime For Frances.
And why do I do that? This is the second simple thing I had in mind. I read a book the first time taking not very much for granted. It's all new to me. But you can't read a book for the first time twice and if you have ever tried to do that--to experience again that initial burst of novelty--you will agree with me. The second time, you begin by taking some things for granted. The part of the text you actually rub up against is the second layer. You're "in" the first layer and you are contacting the second layer.
But it's not the second layer "of the text." At least it's not for me. It's the second layer of things that come to my attention. If a given passage is seven layers deep (and I'm counting "layers away from me, so layers of infrastructure are layers and layers of superstructure are layers also) then the second time I read it, I presume the things I learned the first time and puzzle about the things that are new to me. The third time, I presume the first two and my attention is drawn to the new things.
Word rant: Why don't we just say infrastructure and ultrastructure if we want to use that set of substructure and superstructure if we want to use that series? Why do we have to mix them by choosing the more familiar one of each pair?
So if I follow my own curiosity, rather than, say, any intention the author might have had, reading deep takes me to fascinating places that are not available to anyone on one reading and were not available to me, either, on the first reading. The simple truth is that if you can't read a book twice, then it's a different book every time you read it.
I got to thinking about this in the early 1980s when I was taken with The French Lieutenant's Woman. It was an interesting story, but there was something suggested but not revealed (to me) about the woman. What was it about her? I read it seven times in a row, feeling all the time that I was getting closer to the answer I had "sensed." I got it on the sixth reading and read it the seventh time just to make sure everything worked with that in mind. The French Lieutenant's Woman was a modern woman and knew it. That's what her crime was. That's why she would rather be thought a whore than to have it known who she was.
If there are "right answers" to quests like this one (doubtful), I'd have to say I have no idea if this is one. I am quite sure that the answer I came to is the one I sensed on the first reading and finally put a name to on the penultimate reading. It was the right answer to the question I had been asking. Of course, I didn't know what the question had been either, until I found the answer.
The reason for this post at this time is that I was reminded of "reading deep" by my recent experience with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I had read it once before, I think, but last month I went on a P & P tear and read it four times. Not all of it four times. I scanned it all looking for what I was curious about. Then I scanned the parts I was curious about to see if I could say what I was seeing.
Here's what I came up with. For those of you who actually know the Austen corpus this may be beyond trite, but I discovered it myself so I get to plant the flag in the sand and claim it. There is a good deal of very funny prose in P & P. When I came face to face with how much I disliked Elizabeth's mother, I came to a new appreciation of her father, Mr. Bennet. Here is one that made me laugh out loud. Mrs. Bennet says, "Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? (by refusing to pay a call on a new gentleman in the area). You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves." To which Mr. Bennet replies, "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."
When I began to look for lines with that perverted puckish sense, I found a lot of them. But then I found that she doesn't use that language when she's busy developing plot. If the plot can be said to have periods of description and development and periods of climax, this language I like so much is in the development parts.
It isn't all that much of a realization, but I had to go deep to find it, which means I had to respect my own curiosity (and withstand the routine and good-natured abuse of others) over a number of readings. I found the process very satisfying and the result very satisfying as well.
But...you can't read everything deeply and still read a lot of books. So I read broadly as well.
I'm going to take a breath now.
Everyone who has ever really studied literature has learned ways of deep or "analytical" study. It's a way of getting deep into a piece of literature--into its "essence," you might say. But that's not what I'm talking about. I have two things in mind, both simple.
The first is to contrast reading deep with shallow reading. I mean to imply no value judgments here, but the truth of the matter is that a person who has read 20 books, once each, has had a different reading experience that has a person who has read 5 books, four times each. I do read a lot of different books, but I also read particular books over and over: Lord of the Rings, The Lathe of Heaven, Gaudy Night, Bedtime For Frances.
And why do I do that? This is the second simple thing I had in mind. I read a book the first time taking not very much for granted. It's all new to me. But you can't read a book for the first time twice and if you have ever tried to do that--to experience again that initial burst of novelty--you will agree with me. The second time, you begin by taking some things for granted. The part of the text you actually rub up against is the second layer. You're "in" the first layer and you are contacting the second layer.
But it's not the second layer "of the text." At least it's not for me. It's the second layer of things that come to my attention. If a given passage is seven layers deep (and I'm counting "layers away from me, so layers of infrastructure are layers and layers of superstructure are layers also) then the second time I read it, I presume the things I learned the first time and puzzle about the things that are new to me. The third time, I presume the first two and my attention is drawn to the new things.
Word rant: Why don't we just say infrastructure and ultrastructure if we want to use that set of substructure and superstructure if we want to use that series? Why do we have to mix them by choosing the more familiar one of each pair?
So if I follow my own curiosity, rather than, say, any intention the author might have had, reading deep takes me to fascinating places that are not available to anyone on one reading and were not available to me, either, on the first reading. The simple truth is that if you can't read a book twice, then it's a different book every time you read it.
I got to thinking about this in the early 1980s when I was taken with The French Lieutenant's Woman. It was an interesting story, but there was something suggested but not revealed (to me) about the woman. What was it about her? I read it seven times in a row, feeling all the time that I was getting closer to the answer I had "sensed." I got it on the sixth reading and read it the seventh time just to make sure everything worked with that in mind. The French Lieutenant's Woman was a modern woman and knew it. That's what her crime was. That's why she would rather be thought a whore than to have it known who she was.
If there are "right answers" to quests like this one (doubtful), I'd have to say I have no idea if this is one. I am quite sure that the answer I came to is the one I sensed on the first reading and finally put a name to on the penultimate reading. It was the right answer to the question I had been asking. Of course, I didn't know what the question had been either, until I found the answer.
The reason for this post at this time is that I was reminded of "reading deep" by my recent experience with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I had read it once before, I think, but last month I went on a P & P tear and read it four times. Not all of it four times. I scanned it all looking for what I was curious about. Then I scanned the parts I was curious about to see if I could say what I was seeing.
Here's what I came up with. For those of you who actually know the Austen corpus this may be beyond trite, but I discovered it myself so I get to plant the flag in the sand and claim it. There is a good deal of very funny prose in P & P. When I came face to face with how much I disliked Elizabeth's mother, I came to a new appreciation of her father, Mr. Bennet. Here is one that made me laugh out loud. Mrs. Bennet says, "Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? (by refusing to pay a call on a new gentleman in the area). You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves." To which Mr. Bennet replies, "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."
When I began to look for lines with that perverted puckish sense, I found a lot of them. But then I found that she doesn't use that language when she's busy developing plot. If the plot can be said to have periods of description and development and periods of climax, this language I like so much is in the development parts.
It isn't all that much of a realization, but I had to go deep to find it, which means I had to respect my own curiosity (and withstand the routine and good-natured abuse of others) over a number of readings. I found the process very satisfying and the result very satisfying as well.
But...you can't read everything deeply and still read a lot of books. So I read broadly as well.
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