"This is perhaps the best rough test of what is literature and what is not. If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." - Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying: An Observation
Do you reread books? Some people never do - "so many books, so little time". Other people, and you might be one, have book friends - books that you like to revisit over and over again, books you know almost by heart. They're often the books that you read when you were young, that spoke to you in a profound way. Those are some of my favorite books. I first read two of them when I was 11. One was a ballet story with a great sense of place. I felt as if I were in London and Northumberland. The other took place in Glasgow. They made me want to travel and see the places that came alive in their pages. Then, when I was 13, I read a book called Maud. It was a collection of diaries written by Isabella Maud Rittenhouse between 1881 and 1895, when she was aged 16 to 30. I was immersed in life in Cairo, Illinois. (I have to tell you that I coerced my book club into reading the book, and nobody, but nobody, liked it.) Maud has been my companion for many, many years, and I was ecstatic to be given an autographed copy of the book - yes, signed by Maud herself! - by one of our book club members. So some books have taken me around the world, and others have taken me into the past. Some make me laugh and others make me cry. The very best books become friends.
The problem with rereading, however, is that you may find that you have outgrown some of those friends. My mother loved the Jerry Todd and Poppy Ott books. Reading her old diaries as I have been doing lately (perhaps a topic for another article), I found that at the age of thirteen she claimed they were her favorite books. When I was young (much younger than thirteen), she found a Jerry Todd book at the Goodwill. Oh frabjous day! But when she started to read it to me, we both realized that Jerry Todd was a pretty boring companion. Oh well, my mother still had Alice, Mole and Ratty, Winnie the Pooh, and the Bastable children.
As an adult in the age of feminism - 1970s style - I read some books that really spoke to me. A particular favorite was a French novel called Va Voir Maman, Papa Travail. Rereading it later, I became irritated with the whiny mother. I had moved on to taking more control in my life rather than following the example of characters who imagined they were powerless. I had changed, but books, of course, don't.
Along with growing apart from some old friends, there is a risk that you may realize that your pal has some outdated notions that you may not have picked up on when you first read the book. Lately, Dr Seuss has come under attack for his illustrations using racial and ethnic stereotypes, but you may be surprised by how many other children's classics are guilty of the same thing: Mary Poppins, 1930 Newbery Medalist Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, Mary Norton's Bedknob and Broomstick. They all take their main characters someplace where the children (or doll) meet "savages" or "heathens". It shouldn't be a shock when we run into outdated attitudes, but it often is.
What may happen next became the topic of an article I wrote a few years ago: "I have read many articles about books banned in libraries, such as when the Vancouver Public Library received a request to eliminate a Dr. Seuss book (If I Ran the Zoo). Banning books runs counter to the standards of the American Library Association. Many children's classics such as Mary Poppins would be lost to us, as would Newbery Award winners like Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (old favorites of mine that I found disturbing when I revisited them as an adult). I view banning such books as an attempt to erase history. Books that make us uncomfortable, books that were lauded when they were published and continued to be favorites for decades, should not be hidden away or destroyed or rewritten to remove what may be offensive. Instead, we should acknowledge the attitudes of the past which justified discrimination, and which still linger today. Being uncomfortable is what spurs people to make a change. And changes are being made. We can rejoice in the progress that is being made to provide positive depictions of all peoples, and make sure that it continues."
But back to the topic of rereading: Do it at your own risk. Know that you may be disappointed if you pick up a favorite from decades ago, but there is also great comfort in spending time with so many of your old book friends. I know. I just finished Joyce Dennys' Henrietta's War: News from the Home Front, 1939-1942 and was delighted once again with it. In fact, a bookmark fell out of the book just now, as I was copying the full title onto my computer, that had "a good book is a good friend" written on it.
Read this:
Walking a literary labyrinth : a spirituality of reading / Malone, Nancy M. 028.9 MAL
"In Walking a Literary Labyrinth, Malone invites all us readers, of every religious tradition, or none, to consider the influence of reading in our own lives—how and why particular books stay with us, how they shape us, and how they enlarge our humanity." - from the publisher