Try the Indian

As we close out our discussion this week, I'm aware (always keenly) of so many things about Maps that we haven't mentioned. Did I share the fact that chapter ten features a concert by the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan? Did I tell you, as the narrator does, that a sparrow has three thousand feathers and grows an extra five hundred at the beginning of winter? What good am I?

I wish we had said more about the humor in Maps, which sometimes takes a second or third reading to catch. There's a subplot, for example, involving efforts by the family of the honor-killers to cover the killers' tracks. It's too complicated to describe fully here, but suffice it to say that a) the family is not nearly clever or criminal-minded enough to get away with it, and b) their plan depends on the unlikely event of finding two young strangers to stand in for the missing couple. It's a hopeless scheme, but they find one boy who agrees to participate. In the end, they spend so much time conspiring with the boy that people start to notice. The family is shocked when a neighbor asks: so who's that kid that's always hanging around?

Speaking of funny, did I mention the plumber who drives by in chapter eight? His van bears the legend, "You've tried the cowboys, now try the Indian."

Good advice, that.

Comments

[Mike]

"...which sometimes takes a second or third reading to catch."

I've never been one to read a book more than once. To those that do, what can you say to convince me to do so?

[Max]

I only read a book twice if I actually miss the pleasure I got from reading that book, and, while many books are enjoyable to read, few are so enjoyable that I want to have the experience of reading them again. Basically, I'll only read a book a second (or third, or..) time if I can't keep myself from rereading it. There are probably people who reread a book because they want to get a deeper understanding of it, but not me.

[Sam]

Mike, I was unclear. I wasn't talking about rereading books, I was talking about rereading sentences. Something, I'll confess, I often have to do in order to understand them.

I don't reread books from start to finish very often, but I do on a near-daily basis look into books I've already read in search of something I remember, or think I remember; to confirm a quotation or expression I want to use in something I'm writing; or to confirm or challenge a quotation in something someone else has written. Perhaps in this I'm unconsciously fulfilling Flann O'Brien's tongue-in-cheek dictum that "The modern novel should be largely a work of reference."

Sometimes I'll reread a book because I don't feel like reading any of the unread books I have lying around. Sometime I'll reread a book because, now that I've read the book, I want to find out more about how this "verbal contraption" works. (Auden was talking about poetry when he used this expression, but forget that.)

I would guess that most people, as Max suggests, reread books for the same reason they'll see a movie a second time -- because they enjoyed it the first time and want to enjoy it again. I do this with comic novels, just for laughs. For example, one book I've read many, many times is "Diary of a Nobody." A nice side-benefit is that I always have a ready retort for impertinent shopkeepers, ironmongers, greengrocers' boys, etc.

[Mike]

Thanks, Max & Sam. I, too, reread sentences, paragraphs and pages all the time.

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