Why do we read?

There are different reasons for different people and even the same people read for various reasons at specific periods of their lives. I have realized that lately I read heavier type of books, and started to ask myself the question why do I read at all and what is my need for reading based on those days. Some suggestions which convinced me are to be found in one of the Alain de Botton’s books in the chapter about reading. Maybe the answer is “Because books are so good at helping us to become aware of certain things we feel”? Do the books provide us with answers? De Botton does not think so. He says “our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves it off…” or “Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it introduces us to it: it does not constitute it.”
                                                        
So, let’s say that I read in this period of my life to uncover some of my feelings that may have been dormant or I have been blind to. I am not sure if I am progressing as my emotional life is still full of confusion. Things are messy while I like them nice and neat, well structured. Looks that I will not be able to have it my way, no matter how hard I try. Control over my life is also doubtful. Perhaps it always has been that way but I was not forced to see it so clearly as I am now, that I need to submit to medical treatments playing havoc with my well-being. So, I am looking for new answers to my perennial question: “How to live, prime minister?” Will books help? They should to some extent, at least I can use them to amuse myself while waiting till some difficult times pass. The only problem that reading purely for amusement does not work for me. At least not now. I thought, I try though. Since I am in still in a catch-up mode to cover the years of break in reading fiction, I thought that it is time to read some of Ian McEwan. People rave about him. I got two of his books from the local library, not exactly my pick, simply what was there.

Apparently and coincidentally the book is a remake of Hamlet even if not a part of the Hogarth project. McEwan was not invited to it and some think that it was a mistake in Hogarth Press judgement. So, he wrote his version without any invitation and published it before Gillian Flynn’s rendition of Hamlet will be finished. Did he win the race? This we will find out. The book did not resonate with me on a deeper level, but I admire the masterful story telling. At the same time, it was a good example of a mostly good book that did not do a job for me. Looks that I do not read books for their story line only. I think that the readers pleaser were the descriptions of the embryo imbibing the alcohol drunk by his mother and making in depth wine connoisseurs’ comments. Cute, I would say, and the writer perhaps could not take my complement as pleasing. Looks that I needed  to have my jibe as I only reluctantly give the author credit for the book. There is a bad taste in my mouth it left. I have ticked off Ian McEwan and do not have to return to his writing, unless persuaded.  

                                              

The children Act and Nutshell. After few pages of The Children Act, I realized that this is not going to be a book to read for fun. Well written, yes. Interesting, yes. Only I knew the film with Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci and I remembered it well, so I put it aside and started the next one. I must say that it was a novel idea to make an embryo a hero and the narrator of the book. One has to smile and shake one’s head at the concept. I responded to some of the humour, but a bit reluctantly. The style of writing is impressive, but style only never impressed me. I need some essence, meaning.

My recent reading fascinations

I have been always a reader. It started very early when I was a solitary child and I occupied myself after my homework with reading. My mother had a very comprehensive library of classics. At that time in Poland, French literature came just after or just in front of Polish literature in the minds of those who knew what was what. The books were published in series. All books of the same author bound in covers of the same colour and design. Often the books were even bound in leather or some sort of fabric. One had to subscribe to buy such editions. My mother did and I suspect she bought all that was available. However, I do not remember any Dostoyevsky on the shelves. She may have been selective in her book choices, after all. I do not remember her reading the books, she may have only planned to read them one day. When the days when she had enough time to read came, she preferred to watch TV. So, I cannot remember my beautiful mother sitting with the book, engrossed in the story she would be reading. But the library was big and comprehensive. Balzac was all maroon colour, two Polish most famous poets of XIX century were one in pale blue and the other in brownish red with horizontal golden stripes. Polish Nobel prize winner in 1924, Reymont, got a special new covers ordered by my mother at a place that bound books to order. The spines were made of linen canvas. Influenced by my mother’s library and her, perhaps, exaggerated, care for the way the books looked like, I always believed that there is something very special about the written word. I became an avid reader then. I had a reading break for some years when I was working too intensively to read much except for books helping me to be successful at work. Now, I have returned to serious reading. And this is again literature rather than psychological of self-help books. I like nicely published books like my mother did and I often buy hardcover books when available. Or I buy books in Poland, they are much cheaper there than in Australia and they usually have great covers. Silly? Yes, it is silly, but my pleasure of reading nicely looking books seems to be bigger than reading ones that are flimsy and do not open properly.

Writing about my reading I just realized that this is the whole process for me and some trappings are of importance. The reading light needs to be good. But this is just common sense. I like nice bookmarks and I collect them. I have my special reading corners at home. Bookcases are the most important pieces of furniture.

HanyaYanagihara

Andre Aciman

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Kazuo Ishiguro

After some inner struggle, I have accepted retirement as my current way of life and reading became an important part of my life again. For a while, I did not have any favourite writers. I know the names of classics and I have a good idea what their writing is all about, but I was looking for some guidance. I have a friend who knows about literature and he made some very good suggestions and some very good presents that I had to read at least out of politeness. Slowly, the list of my absolute favourites got organically identified. It will perhaps grow or maybe even change, but for now, it is Ishiguro, Aciman, Knaussgard, and Yanagihara. I am catching up with works of Ishiguro and Aciman. They are my discoveries of the last six months. I already know Knausgaard quite well, but he is so prolific in his writing that there is always a stream of new books coming from him. Yanagihara’s next book will come in a good few years and I am already curious what her next subject will be.

I wondered what links the writers and why I got so attracted to their books. They all have the reputation of being “Proustian”. They all say that Dostoyevsky Chekhov and Proust had very big influence on them and the way they write. I know Chekhov only from his plays. Maybe I should read some of his stories? My favourites’ reading lists show me the way and I may follow their example one day. I have read Proust already. It took me many years, but I even enjoyed it and got the mood of the books. I have a problem with Dostoyevsky, though. I have read most of his books, but this was a very long time ago, I was very young then and perhaps I did not understand their value. Read him now again? This is rather off-putting. So intense, those turbulent feelings, tragedies all around, those Dostoyevsky’s women blindly following their men to perdition. A good way to get depressed. But I have his books on my shelves. Hmm…. No, not now.

If I chose to study literature rather than mathematics, I would most likely have stayed in Poland and landed up a teacher of a uni professor. I wonder how my life would have been then. Not that I have any regrets, just momentary curiosity.

Today, I have been reading the essays of Aciman – Alibis. The chapter Intimacy resonated with me a lot. Many ideas made me stop and ponder about myself. Apparently, according to Aciman, in the process of reading, we find ourselves and this may lead to deeper understanding of self. This is actually my reason for reading and this desire dictates the choice of books I read.

The sentence that made me stop and re-read it few times: Insight and intuition are borne from this intimate fusion of self with something or someone else. I think that other things can also be borne from such a fusion.

Random thoughts

I am going through a little strange time in my life, a time when I have reached a high degree of detachment from my everyday interests and activities. I went through a rather serious and planned hospital procedure four days ago. It was my decision rather than necessity. Even if I took it well and things went accordingly to plan, it was a lot of unknowns involved and this is normally stressful. I somehow managed to transport to a bubble where my priorities were concentrated on the best emotional preparation for what was to come. Now it is time to come back to normal, but it is comfortable in my bubble. I am free of any duties, so I read, think, watch serials on my PC, play bridge online and sleep. Rather nice, especially that there is no pain involved only some tiredness.

                                                      

This type of life does not give me many subjects to write about. This will soon come when I progress with the books I read. It is The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, Madame Bovary, Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard and perhaps a story or two from Nocturnes by my latest favourite writer Kazuo Ishiguro. A lot to read at the same time, I admit. The Blazing World is my focus.

For now, I think I will come back to the subject of my previous post on Chekhov and modern adaptations of his plays. I have been thinking about it a bit as I felt uncomfortable with my way of receiving the Sydney performance. I thought, I thought and I came to the same conclusions as earlier on. I think it is disrespectful by a translator of a classical master to change the form of the original play, its climate, mood, type of language and even the story. Very little of The Tree Sisters is left after Upton’s treatment. The text like this one cannot be updated to the extent it has been done this time. It is the duty of the translator and the director of the play to serve the master rather than modify his text to serve a personal purpose. I wonder what was supposed to be achieved. Feeling bigger than Chekhov? Making it easier for the public to get it? Not good ideas in my mind.

Chekhov was a wise man who loved the characters he depicted in his plays and showed what was going inside them with tenderness, but with honesty nevertheless. This, in my opinion, the Sydney adaptation missed. I felt that the characters were mocked and judged. Very un-Chekhov. The sense of humour was another miss. Chekhov’s sense of humour is deep and subtle. I could not say anything like that about the play I saw. It was just crude.

Perhaps it is enough on the subject coming from somebody who is not a theatre critic. 

Re-discovering pleasure of reading

I have been home bound for some days. This temporarily changed my lifestyle and I re-discovered reading for pleasure. Being an achievement oriented person I typically read books not that much for fun but to get new skills, learn more. This has been fine but reading for pleasure of reading is great. In my earlier years I loved reading, it may have been some form of escape for me. Maybe reading is usually a form of escape from our everyday lives? It also stimulates our imagination, brings new observations, new wisdom.

As for ten years I was the only child and I was not allowed to play with kids in a communistic, industrial, small town yard, I was finding my friends in books.  I started to read early and my favourite were stories about boarding schools for girls. My mother must have bought them for me in a second hand book shop as my childhood years were communistic times in Poland. The literature of the times had to glorify the working class not boarding schools for girls from higher social classes.   

No wonder that reading recently Charlotte Bronte’s - Villette I re-discovered moods of my childhood and that gave me additional pleasure in reading the book.

          

Villette is about life in pennsionat – boarding school of Madam Beck. I was lucky to be able to buy a beautiful edition of all the novels of  the three Bronte sisters with great wood engravings by Peter Reddick. I am making my way though the set of the seven novels and Villette is my favourite so far. Boarding schools were a favourite location of the novels of Charlotte Bronte, so it is not surprising that I particularly like writing of this sister.

Charlotte Bronte

The story is about Lucy Snowe, an orphan who does not have any family and for a short while has to go through life with help of her godmother but soon she is left to her own devices.  She is a determined teenage girl when the story starts who has little money but enough to help her to get to Villette – Brussels where the main story takes place. The plot is not very convincing or realistic, but this does not matter much. There are compensations! The story is an excuse to write about subjects that must have been important and close to the heart of Charlotte, and perhaps the other sisters as well – working women in the XIXth century, their independence,  loneliness, spirituality and life styles of England and Europe. The currency of the issues discussed at length by Charlotte Bronte is amazing. She writes about issues that are still important, need attention and hopefully improvement. Or maybe they are just issues that are not resolvable and this is the reason why the book is so relevant also in the current times.

Some of my friends describe me as European. I am not sure if this is a plus or a minus but the fact is that some of my behaviours and reactions are not of an Anglo-Saxon nature. I call myself an Aussie with a strange accent but there must be a lot of European left in me that I am not aware of. Charlotte Bronte who for some time lived in Brussels was aware of the differences in behaviours of English and Belgian or generally European people.  The differences, in her experience, were not in plus for Europe. She sees Europeans as skimming, not trustworthy, fickle, flirty, generally without much substance. She noticed that there are exceptions, thanks God.

The subject of religion is a strong point of the novel. Bronte is a spiritual person but she  declares that “God is not with Rome”. I may agree with this statement but it is a subject for another post.