On the joy of re-reading

"No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading." -Susan Sontag

Karin Reading, by Carl Larsson (1904)

Susan Sontag once characterized the pleasure of reading as a “model for self-transcendence.” She observed that the pleasure of reading is always closely associated with the possibility of re-reading. When we revisit a text, we encounter it, and ourselves, in a new light, continuously finding new resonances. Reading is not only a way of “disappearing” into the text, but — in a sense — also a process of self-discovery; or what Camus once referred to as “the mind watching itself.” This duality, of losing and finding onself in the process of reading should encourage us to read more.

As Susan Sontag puts it:

Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.

Indeed, some of the greatest love-affairs we have with books are with those that invite and encourage us to return. Books that we can pick up over and over again remind ourselves of who we are and why we read. These are books that we carry with us all our lives.

And yet, perhaps reading shouldn’t always be comforting. As Kafka once observed, a book should “be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Books have the potential to change us forever, often by confounding us, challenging our preconceptions and beliefs. Returning to Kafka, these are “books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide.”

And perhaps this duality of experience, the pleasure of the familar and the shock of the new, is what makes reading so vital to our lives. As Susan Sontag cautioned, “the absence of reading would spell the death of inwardness.” Books are vital, and worth protecting, as is our time to read them.

And on that note, please see this as a small encouragement to keep reading the books you love and to never feel like you’re wasting time if you re-read a book. Consider re-reading your favorite books as a kind of lifelong conversation, one that you can pick up and continue with anytime, anywhere.

Julian

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