a common party question between strangers: “what movie do you wish you could watch again for the first time?” if it’s a canvas totebag crowd they might ask which book you would read again for the first time instead. i’ve always thought there was something paradoxical about this first-time fetishism for media. on the surface, it seems like the desire is for novelty. but what people are actually asking for is to repeat an experience exactly. rereading something is more novel than reading something again for the first time.
this kind of teases out an aspect of what is weird to me about like, reading list/ reading goal/reading challenge culture. their question—google it & see how many people are asking it—“does rereading count as reading?” which means some people think it does. but they seem defensive about it. & apparently some people don’t think rereading counts. certainly, rereading a book isn’t an accomplishment.
& certainly in school we don’t reread. i would love to see rereading written into the/a curriculum to some degree—i think it would be great for instance to have girls read jane eyre when they’re thirteen & naive enough to be as puzzled as jane by mr rochester’s game, & then again in senior year. not too much rereading. just enough for students to get the idea of how different it is from a first read, the different fruits.
obviously not every book stands up to rereading. some are sucked dry on a first pass & are at best cozy & familiar to go over again. but some have a fractal quality; somehow, in that fixed & finite collection of words, there is always something new to notice. life is limited & literature is broad, i will never read everything i want to, but many books are newer on the fifth go-round than other books are the first time.
and of course (many have said this) when rereading you don’t just re-experience the book; you reexperience your self. largely what this means is that you bump into your old misreadings. you rezlise that you were wrong last time you read this; you think about what kind of person you must have been, to be wrong in exactly that way
“I am becoming convinced that the only real way to "personal growth" outside of direct action is through careful study of fiction. Of course stories may have an intended meaning, but a well written story allows you to ask not just "what does the story mean?" but "why do I think that this is what the story means?"
-the last psychiatrist
"rereading something is more novel than reading something again for the first time" - Having been on a rereading binge, I'm tickled by this pun
"would love to see rereading written into the/a curriculum to some degree" - To a certain extent students do reread for writing literary critique essays but only selected passages. Rereading seems to bear fruit only when the reader and the book have a sort of fateful meeting. I've reread books I had to study for 2 years for a national exam and for each read, I approached the book mainly as 'student studying for an exam'