`An Afterglow, an Aura, a Faint Fragrance'

Nige’s willingness to admit how little he remembers of the books he has read comes as refreshing news in the ego-swollen blogosphere. Only the idiot savants among us remember every word, and one wonders how many words they’ve actually enjoyed. Feats of monstrous recall usually are cause for embarrassment. Once, over the formaggio e frutta course, I witnessed an English professor spurt Dante at great length in the original. At least that’s what he said it was, and we were too appalled and ignorant to doubt him or return to the Gorgonzola.

To know one good book well – say, The Anatomy of Melancholy – would be sufficient accomplishment for a lifetime. What I retain from most is a glow of pleasure or its opposite -- irritation mingled with nausea and guilt. The one book from which I preserve much quantifiable information – nuggets of fact and words once new to my vocabulary -- is Ulysses. Joyce taught me the meaning of omphalos, parallax, pyx, Basta!, K.M.R.I.A., beef to the heels and agenbite of inwit. Not to mention “Mrkgnao!” He boasted that Dublin, c. 1904, could be rebuilt from the information he had squirreled away in Ulysses. Nige notes:

“I know I must have read large numbers of books that I don't even remember reading - occasionally I find myself reading one, and realise I'm actually rereading...”

In what epistemological category do the books we have read but no longer remember reside? They hover among our dreams – once vivid, now gone. And how pleasant it would be to rediscover such a book and find it has mysteriously transformed into a masterpiece. Nige again:

“What I like to think is that the better ones (of the books I do at least remember reading) have left some beneficial trace at a level somewhere just below the conscious, retrievable memory - an afterglow, an aura, a faint fragrance... Or maybe I'm deluding myself?”

I suspect not. Some of those déjà vu-like will-o-the-wisps that whisper through consciousness – might they be traces of books read and imperfectly forgotten? The failing is not always ours when it comes to their evaporation. Some are written to guarantee oblivion, and that’s merciful. In her diary on July 1, 1939, the wonderful novelist Dawn Powell mentions reading aloud to her 17-year-old retarded son:

“I read a chapter of David Copperfield a day to him, explaining points of conduct, geography, history, character, ethics, etc., and it seems a means of awakening him to realities. Dickens read aloud shows how far afield we moderns have gone from duty to readers. The reading mind is a12-year old mind just like the movie mind. It requires a gentle introduction to its story, characters slowly and definitely introduced with major physical descriptions since no movie was anticipated; noises, backgrounds, voices, all clarified since no radio version was planned. If authors continued to pander to every sense, as the old writers did, instead of pandering to their own egos, books would still be greater than radio or movies.”

While writing this, Dave Lull informed me he had purchased a copy of Guy Davenport’s Twelve Stories, a selection from his eight earlier volumes of fiction. I told Dave I hadn’t read it and didn’t own it because I own all the previous collections (19 of Davenport’s books are on my shelf, several of which I remember quite well). He mentioned it included a brief postscript which I expressed interest in reading. Within minutes Dave sent a link and I found a pertinent sentence:

“It is not wise to look too hard at what’s going on when we read and write, for in both we are dithering around on the boundary between the demonstrable world and the inviolably private world of our minds.”