The re-reading project

[Wilfrid]

"There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before." -- Harold Bloom

I used to tell myself I would one day re-read my entire library, but even after one subtracts reference works, dictionaries, guide books and the like, simple math compels me to admit that won't happen. People have asked me, why do you keep all these books? You can't re-read them all. My response: I don't know which ones I will re-read.

The time has come to decide. There are books it would break my heart never to read again, but of course nobody knows how much time remains. I made a start by listing about 50 or 60 works of fiction from my collection (I can't get my head around all the non-fiction). I probably won't read them in strict alphabetical order (by author), but I thought I'd try adding the list, bit by bit, here, to see what reactions there are. And maybe to hold myself to the project.

1. Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

2. Leonid Andreyev, stories

3. Mikhail Artsybashev, Sanin

4. Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable

5. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

[relbbaddoof]

The demise of @Sneakeater has stripped this group of 33 1/3% of its reading-books membership. It's just you and I, now.

But, I'll disappoint you. Your tastes are too rich for my blood. I'm a simpleton and am currently re-reading [1] all of P.G. Wodehouse, all 90+ish books. Worse, I'm reading them aloud my Italian-American wife [2], complete with excursions on the side into commentaries on the opus [3].

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Indians of my generation were huge fans of Wodehouse, as evidenced (to use a word Wodehouse would never) by this Telegu version of Uncle Dynamite. I also gather that there's a following in China for Thank You, Jeeves.

[2] She makes me do it

[3] See essays by George Orwell, Anthony Lane, et al

Edited March 6 by relbbaddoof

[Wilfrid]

Thank you for the response. I have some right here. 

[relbbaddoof]

Haré Krishna, those look like old books. You must be pushing 40.

Me, I had a bunch of tattered Penguin paperbacks, some with the classic orange bands, but when my grand re-reading project began I started buying  these new, pretty, hardcover Everyman's editions.

I envy you yours. You did say you were downsizing. How about a dollar for the lot, and dinner at Foxface after I return from Paris next week?

 

Edited March 6 by relbbaddoof

[Wilfrid]

Wait, not downsizing at all. I've had those old Wodehouse books since I was a kid. I have countless old Penguins if you want to see them.

I am just now mildly embarrassed by the Kim Wilde video tape in that picture. How is she doing?

[MitchW]

A good portion of @Sneakeater's book collection (and it was extensive) may be found at either of the two Topos used book shops, in (you guessed it), Ridgewood.  Of course, I may have absconded with a few, though not the heavy tomes that you two might at any time be absorbed in.  Mostly picture books...well, art books, that is.  And inside the front cover you might well find a stamp showing who the book once belonged to.  I'll add, parenthetically, that a good percentage of his CD collection may well be found, sans said stamp, at Academy Records on 18th Street.  The CD collection was vast, and though I and a few others absconded with a few, we barely made a dent.

8 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

I am just now mildly embarrassed by the Kim Wilde video tape in that picture. How is she doing?

Now that's a bit of a hoarding situation there, don't you think?  A Personality Crisis, perhaps? I'm kind of willing to bet that whatever is on the video tape can be found in the ether somewhere, somehow.

As to Kim, well she's into quite a busy touring schedule this year...https://www.kimwilde.com/tour-dates/

[Wilfrid]

Hoarding, absolutely. I don't even have a working VHS player but I probably have 50 tapes.

I do not know the Topos stores but clearly need to become acquainted. Wrong. I looked them up and I have been to the one a few minutes walk from what was Morscher's. I didn't know of Topos Too on Myrtle.

[Wilfrid]

Enlarging the picture I see Elvis "Aloha from Hawaii" next to Ms Wilde (although I could have just gotten up and gone and looked).

 

[Steve R.]

On 3/6/2025 at 10:26 AM, Wilfrid said:

Hoarding, absolutely. I don't even have a working VHS player but I probably have 50 tapes.

 

I have about the same amount, many of which are mass produced (maybe not mass bought) concert videos.  Others are minor cult films or New Line Cinema productions.  And I think I have the Mets '86 NL playoffs and World Series games - home taped and probably no longer watchable.  I actually have a VCR player in our bedroom but its sole purpose is to put an extra 6-8" between our dresser top and the TV bottom so that we can see the screen over the foot posts of the bed.  No tape has been inserted in years. 

As for reading, well Ginny does that for the 2 of us.  Mostly mystery novels but I think she sneaks in some history stuff too.  I do crosswords and troll the internet.

Edited March 11 by Steve R.

[Wilfrid]

So I am almost done with Hawksmoor, which prompted a digression into Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat which was its partial inspiration. I can see the problem is that I am trying to do this in addition to my regular reading. I think some of the regular reading will have to be paused from time to time.

Anyway, here's some more of the list.

6. Breton, Nadja

7. Broch, The Sleepwalkers

8. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

9. William Burroughs, Naked Lunch

10. Joyce Carey, The Horse's Mouth

Some of these, like Nadja, will be really quick reads. Some, like The Sleepwalkers, will not.

[Wilfrid]

On 3/6/2025 at 10:26 AM, Wilfrid said:

Hoarding, absolutely. I don't even have a working VHS player but I probably have 50 tapes.

I do not know the Topos stores but clearly need to become acquainted. Wrong. I looked them up and I have been to the one a few minutes walk from what was Morscher's. I didn't know of Topos Too on Myrtle.

Topos Too is a lovely space, all new rather than used books. More than just a cafe in the back, it has a very nice (beer/wine) bar. Wish it was in my neighborhood.

I bought an Etel Adnan.

[Wilfrid]

Into Andreyev now, reading some (not all) of his stories. He had a huge impact on me in my teens/twenties, to the extent that I tried writing his kind of tales. In a typical case, the plot is secondary to the creation of a mood that might be described as absolute and unredeemable despair. I went through a phase with melancholy authors — Dowson and the Thomson of "The City of Dreadful Night" are others. I think I should fit a couple of Dowson short stories in.

[bloviatrix]

There's only one book I make a point of re-reading once every 10 years or so and that is Pat Barker's Regeneration which is about the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the psychiatrist William Rivers. Each time I read it I discover something different resonates with me.

[Wilfrid]

I'm aware of it but I haven't read it.

[relbbaddoof]

On 3/11/2025 at 11:33 AM, Wilfrid said:

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Let us know how that works out for you.

We were in Leeds over Christmas, Bronte territory, and attempted a rereading of the combo-oeuvre prior to our pilgrimage to Haworth. My wife tackled Jane Eyre. I attempted Wuthering Heights and found it impenetrable. Eventually I switched to 100 best things to do in Leeds and was a happy man thereafter. My wife went on to Charlotte's Villette.

Here's the table at which the family sat and wrote:

Edited March 18 by relbbaddoof

[Wilfrid]

Nice photo. I don't have a clear memory of Wuthering Heights although I've had matching copies of it and Jane Eyre since I was a kid. Since I do clearly remember Jane Eyre, it's possible I gave up on Emily.

By coincidence, I picked up an early poetry collection by Anne Carson last week. It contans "The Glass Essay," a poem that comments extensively on Emily Bronte's poetry. That led me to take a look in the library and I had no idea she had written so much.

Done with Andreyev, moving on to Artsybashev -- contemporaries, both Russian, close together on my shelf, but very different. Sanin may have serious philosophical intentions, but it reads as a challenge to all good taste of the time. Early Russian punk.

[AaronS]

there’s some nice writing about the brontës in howe’s my emily dickinson that I’m sure wilfred would enjoy.

[Wilfrid]

Thank you. I read one of Susan Howe's collections, but it was a while ago.

Reading Artsybashev right after Andreyev confirmed my distant recollection that the latter is a way better writer than the former. But Artsybashev is certainly rambunctious. I'll move Broch's Sleepwalkers up the list to coincide with my round trip to Austin: it's quite long so I'll get through a lot of it on the flights.

Speaking of long, Don Quixote is not far off. Maybe I don't read that beginning to end; I remember it pretty clearly.

11. Cervantes, Don Quixote

12. Conrad, either Nostromo or Lord Jim (maybe the latter, I've read Nostromo more than once)

13. Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (quicker to read than to watch the TV adaptation)

14. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

15. Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov

Mm, speaking of long...

[Wilfrid]

Knocked off Breton last week. The treatment of Nadja is pretty obnoxious, yes, but I recall being struck at the way the text is woven around atmospheric photos. Way before Sebald; was this a first?

[Wilfrid]

Through the first part of Broch on the flight today. I feel like Morante must have known this for Lies and Sorcery. Hadn't occurred to me before.

[Wilfrid]

Into the third part of Sleepwalkers. It's not disappointing; one reservation is that, as it goes on, Broch is drawn more and more to flights of speculation, even short essays, because he has points to make. Better when you're immersed in the characters.

I've already started dipping into Naked Lunch. I don't know when I first read it, but I imagine I was struck by the vast quantities of drugs, weird sex and  insects. Now it just comes across as very, very funny.

[Wilfrid]

Naked Lunch is really good. I tired of Burroughs' misogyny a long time ago, but a remarkable writer.

Now a couple of chapters into Wuthering Heights and I admit I have not read it before. I've owned it in a uniform edition with Jane Eyre since I was a kid and must have come to assume I'd read it. 

[Wilfrid]

Wow, this is wild. And because you can put it on Kindle for nothing or a few cents, the bite-size chapters are ideal for train/bus rides. This won't take me long.

Must remember I skipped Sheltering Sky.

[Wilfrid]

It's hardly news that Wuthering Heights is amazing. What stroke of genius caused her to make chapter three so terrifying that we can't wait to read the lenghty and complex back story that follows? The names do get a bit confusing -- no wonder the Wikipedia page has a family tree. Within a couple of paras you get Catherine, Cathy and Mrs Linton, all the same person.

This set me off looking for the books presence in the wider culture. I would have been listening to Buzzcocks rather than Kate Bush in 1978, but what an extraordinary feat of imagination that song was; written by her at 18 after seeing some of the BBC TV version and before she had picked up the novel.  So many adaptations: I didn't recall that a 2011 TV version makes Heathcliff Black.

[relbbaddoof]

1 hour ago, Wilfrid said:

Wuthering Heights is amazing.

I guess I should have another shot at it. I *had* read it when much younger and do remember it as being terrifyingly atmospheric -- between that and The Hound of the Baskervilles, "the moors" became, in my imagination, a place of terror. Interestingly, that wild part of the Yorkshire landscape had disappeared when the Brontës wrote, and the Industrial Revolution was, so to speak, gathering steam. At about the same time that WH was being written, Titus Salt was setting up his Mills (dark? satanic?) a few miles away in Saltaire and building a village around it to house his workers. (The things one learns in Leeds.)