This weekend in the Guardian, Adam Thirlwell (him again) says he doesn't go in for reader response theory, then posits a suggestion of a theory of the "distracted reader"-- he worries that "we live lives too distracted to comprehend" what we read. .
The art of reading, like every art, is an art of detail. (That's why they're arts.) But no one can retain all the details, nor the details' thematic form. Mostly, what remains is an impression, an isolated sentence.
The only hope is rereading. "A good reader," said Nabokov, "a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader."
Yes, of course. But not only because we're too distracted to read properly the first time through. But because we construct one idea of the book through the first reading, that we then shore up, flesh out, and fine tune on successive readings.
I am beginning to hem and haw and wish Nabokov were still around to write for the Guardian instead of Thrilwell, wondering if Manguel could have been brought in instead (but then he doesn't have a new book to promote), when the wunderkind leaves us with this doosy: "Every novel - this is my worry - is invisible."
Of all the things to worry about.
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