Does it ever happen to you, say when you are reading a good book and all of a sudden you notice it is drawing to a close, the pages unread are growing lesser in number, the right hand side thickness of the pages slimming down gradually and the left increasing in familiar abundance, disrupting the balance of the book's binding - and you get sore and panic? Do you suddenly feel empty in your gut at the prospect of a goodbye? Of an imminent closure that is at once satisfying and unnerving?
Well, I do.
Then, as a self induced therapy, I start making a mental list of the rest of the cool reads I still have in the pipeline. Just for some consolation. Sometimes I go back to the earlier chapters of the same book I am reading and reread. Just for prolonging the pleasure, you see. And then I quite self consciously unread what I have read already. I tell myself that this is a part I missed paying proper attention to and the author must have had a hidden purpose in dealing his tale this or that way. Which I had completely overlooked in my initial and cursory read. I think I tell myself a lot of rubbish to keep myself amused. I horse around a lot with my reading. That, I guess, makes me one helluva phony.
But it works for me.
But sometimes I chicken out. I stop telling stories to myself. I stop rereading stuff. Like when I read The Bluest Eye. I couldn't dare a second read. And I have since then pushed myself away from the memory of the story so far that you may call it a willful suspension of belief. I lost my nerve. I loved it. I hated it.
I still don't know how to unlove Pecola. How to neutralise my outward gaze toward her lot. How to see her as she saw herself from within. How to anaesthetise my agony at her frailty, her supposed ugliness, her mad wish for blue eyes. How to exorcise her destruction from my memory.
I realise that I have pushed her story so hard into an enforced forgetfulness that I no longer remember the full story. I dare not pick up the book again lest it haunts my waking moments with the pain it once shot me.
Call me a lousy coward. A selfish sentimentalist. A stupid one-eyed reader. But I will keep looking for make believe happy endings.
For truth hurts.
Well, I do.
Then, as a self induced therapy, I start making a mental list of the rest of the cool reads I still have in the pipeline. Just for some consolation. Sometimes I go back to the earlier chapters of the same book I am reading and reread. Just for prolonging the pleasure, you see. And then I quite self consciously unread what I have read already. I tell myself that this is a part I missed paying proper attention to and the author must have had a hidden purpose in dealing his tale this or that way. Which I had completely overlooked in my initial and cursory read. I think I tell myself a lot of rubbish to keep myself amused. I horse around a lot with my reading. That, I guess, makes me one helluva phony.
But it works for me.
But sometimes I chicken out. I stop telling stories to myself. I stop rereading stuff. Like when I read The Bluest Eye. I couldn't dare a second read. And I have since then pushed myself away from the memory of the story so far that you may call it a willful suspension of belief. I lost my nerve. I loved it. I hated it.
I still don't know how to unlove Pecola. How to neutralise my outward gaze toward her lot. How to see her as she saw herself from within. How to anaesthetise my agony at her frailty, her supposed ugliness, her mad wish for blue eyes. How to exorcise her destruction from my memory.
I realise that I have pushed her story so hard into an enforced forgetfulness that I no longer remember the full story. I dare not pick up the book again lest it haunts my waking moments with the pain it once shot me.
Call me a lousy coward. A selfish sentimentalist. A stupid one-eyed reader. But I will keep looking for make believe happy endings.
For truth hurts.
Though i was never an avid reader of books myself since my early adulthood,preferring more to divide my time between mugging medical books and playing cricket and my addas, i did have the opportunity to chance upon some riveting books,which once started would eat into my reserved time for other activities. I too have submerged myself so much into these books when looking back and counting on the rectos and versos was simply not possible for me . But these books have been rare for me ,i admit. So i prefer to read more short accounts or anecdotes written or shared by good writers because there is so much to learn from the way they are written! I have not read the book you have mentioned but i am sure that it must have been a really good one!
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