Perhaps the real question is not why you read, but how you read. This observation was brought to you from me having finished Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot just an hour ago. I was certain I had read the book before – but I’m not sure. I recognised the opening chapter. It is entirely possible I had read the opening chapter and then put the book aside. This is one of the ways I read: I flirt with books.
So, the much-fabled, oft-taught and already-classic Flaubert’s Parrot which I may or may not have read previously but which I have definitely read now?
How did I read it?
Well. I felt tempted to make a check-list of post-modern fiction trademarks, so I could check them all: fragmented self (constructed out of texts); history understood and recast as fiction (as the past is inaccessible to us except through texts which by their very nature are linguistic constructs and thus unreliable); the text as bricolage (assembled by quotations and various types of texts); no such thing as Truth but only truthS; &c.
In short: it read like a lesser Pale Fire (true to his metier, Barnes does keep name-dropping Nabokov) but without Pale Fire‘s mania and fevour. My head placed Flaubert’s Parrot next to Graham Swift’s Waterland. Barnes’ novel is a textbook case of post-modern fiction, just like Swift. I did not particularly care for the book – to me, it reads old in way that much older books do not. Because it is such a full-blooded second-generation English post-modern book, it feels very dated to me.
That’s how I read. My head assigns books their place in the literary canon based upon their kinship with other books/authors. I measure them against similar books I have read (and often against unrelated books). How does the writing hold up? Does it surprise me anyway? Does it make me work hard or does it lead me gently through the pages? Will it make me reassess books I have already read? Does it point me towards books I need to read in order to fully appreciate the book I hold in my hands?
Next: a post on things I find in secondhand books. It was my intention to post this today, but someone has not charged the camera batteries. Boo.
Waterland is the final book in my British Literature survey course this year. I have such a weird relationship with it: It is every thing I like about books and post-modernism, and about books that deal with history, but somehow the whole is worth less than its parts to me.
it’s all in when you read it. twenty years ago, when i read flaubert’s parrot, it was newer, and having no frame of reference, somewhat more fun for me than it was for you this time. still, i think i lost it just before i finished it, and never replaced/finished it, so how much could i have loved it?
This is interesting. How we (I, at least) read a book, also largely depends on /when/ we read it, both in our life, in relation to the literary history, and in relation to other books.
When I read Flaubert’s Parrot maybe seven years ago, it surprised me and I was completely fascinated by it. At that point of time I had read quite little po-mo literature, and definitely not Pale Fire (which I still haven’t read).
When I read Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood last year I had that same feeling of ticking off the obligatory traits and themes of women’s literature. But of course, when it was first published in 1977, the genre was much less established, and had I read it then, or as my first novel of that genre, I would probably have enjoyed it more … or just differently?
I agree that it does depend upon when we read a given book. I am not sure that I would have loved Jonathan Coe’s “The House of Sleep” so much if I had first encountered it today. But I read it a decade ago and so I cont it among my favourites. However, I think there are books which transcend this “moment in time”. Gray’s “Lanark” and Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale” spring to mind – as does Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”. Other books are very much dependent upon capturing us at the right time (which is my excuse for a lot of my teenage reading).
I read Swift’s “Waterland” around the same time I read Coe (maybe a bit later). I would like to say that I enjoyed the book – but the truth is that it bored me. I liked what Swift was doing and I really liked the setting (Norfolk seemed so exotic!) but I just didn’t enjoy the book. It was a strange reading experience, actually. (“somehow the whole is worth less than its parts to me” is spot on, Rhi).