
Reading Is Forgetting (2015) - mercer
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/06/26/reading-is-forgetting/
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iliketosleep
I think this is a vast oversimplification. I may not remember the details of
every book, but I do remember the main themes and elements. I think the
usefulness of rereading ultimately depends on what one’s purpose is in reading
a particular book.

If I read a Dan Brown novel, it’s purely for entertainment purposes. I
remember what it was about, and to read it a second time would be of little
benefit and even less enjoyment. But then I read George Orwell’s 1984, where
the enormous insights I gain from it exceed the enjoyment and make it worth
revisiting. The second reading is even more gratifying than the first because
I’m able to consolidate my understanding and discover nuances I'd missed on my
first reading.

~~~
emodendroket
You:

> I think this is a vast oversimplification. I may not remember the details of
> every book, but I do remember the main themes and elements.

The article:

> Only on a third or fourth reading, he claims, do we start behaving toward a
> book as we would toward a painting, holding it all in the mind at once.

> Nabokov does not mention forgetting, but it’s clear that this is what he is
> largely talking about. The physical effort of moving the eyes back and forth
> remains exactly the same on every reading of a book, nor have I ever found
> it particularly laborious. What is different on a second and subsequent
> readings is our growing capacity for retention, for putting things in
> relation to one another. We know the end of the story now and can see how it
> is foreshadowed at the beginning, how the strands are spun and gathered
> together. Rereading Mrs. Dalloway, for example, we are struck on the first
> page to find the comment “What a lark, what a plunge,” of Clarissa’s
> sallying forth from her house into the street, aware as we now are that
> later in the book one of the characters will plunge to his death from an
> upper window. At once we feel we know the novel better, or at least are more
> aware of its careful construction. It is gratifying.

~~~
dotancohen
I find this holds for music as well. From Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to
Vivaldi's Summer to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral, one simply cannot
grasp all the concepts, ideas, conflicts, and motifs in a single listening. In
fact, even after listening to them for _decades_ I still find nuances and
expressions that I've never noticed before.

Another interesting thing about classical music in particular is that
different conductors will emphasize different motifs. Listen to Furtwrangler
vs Bernstein conducting the fore-mentioned Ninth, for example. It is like
seeing two photographs of the same person: obviously the same body but
completely different representations. And each teaches us something different
about the Beethoven's intentions and inspiration.

------
hoodwink
> I ran across a quotation from Vladimir Nabokov on the Internet: “Curiously
> enough,” the author of Lolita tells us, “one cannot read a book: one can
> only reread it."

...

> Nabokov continues his essay, quoting Flaubert: _Comme l’on serait savant si
> l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq ou sìx livres._ (“What a scholar one
> might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.”) The ideal here, it
> seems, is total knowledge of the book, total and simultaneous awareness of
> all its contents, total recall. Knowledge, wisdom even, lies in depth, not
> extension. The book, at once complex and endlessly available for revisits,
> allows the mind to achieve an act of prodigious control. Rather than
> submitting ourselves to a stream of information, in thrall to each
> precarious moment of a single reading, we can gradually come to possess,
> indeed to memorize, the work outside time.

...

> Couldn’t there be a hint of irony in Flaubert’s _Comme l’on serait
> savant..._ (“What a scholar one might be…”)? Is it really wise to renounce
> all the impressions that a thousand books could bring, all that living, for
> the wisdom of five or six?

That question has been on my mind lately. I can't speak to fine literature
like the author of this article, but with high quality non-fiction, I've found
that becoming well-read suits me better than widely-read. By that I mean I've
discovered more benefits from reading fewer books deeply than more books
superficially. This notion of slowing down and reading less would have been
anathema to my younger self.

~~~
jnicholasp
It might be that different approaches to reading are more useful at different
points in your life. When you're young, inexperienced, ignorant, inevitably
mentally provincial, you might well gain most by reading widely and quickly in
order to acquire perspective and a passing familiarity with a lot of things.
Once you've built a reasonably rounded, if shallow, model of the world, and
started to learn which parts of it you are most passionate about, you'll
probably gain most by going deeply into those.

Breadth first search, then depth on the best matches, in other words.

------
UhUhUhUh
I do not believe what we read is "forgotten" as in deleted. I believe, it
remains as a distinct series of patterns that may or may not be elicited
again, depending on circumstances. Proust's "madeleine" is a perceptual
example of this and we all have many such. Often, entire passages of books I
read come back up to my awareness without me even knowing what the book was. I
could possibly investigate but I prefer to rely on this human ability to
retrieve percepts or meaning in an apparent random fashion, as I trust my
brain entirely. There are amply enough potential connections or patterns of
connections in anyone's brain to store, in a way or another, pretty much
anything we are exposed to, from the trivial to the essential. As far as I am
concerned, a book read is a book stored. Maybe not wilfully remembered, but
mine.

------
shubhamjain
One of the primary reasons I read books is to get a wider perspective on how
everything works. It's true that the first read is barely enough to recall any
details but it's suffice to grasp the essence. And often, essence is all I
want. I can barely recall anything from "The Ascent of Money" but the book
enabled me to finally understand the financial system—How money works? Where
does it come from? Why does US has $18T of federal debt? All questions became
crystal clear because of the book's simplicity.

I don't feel good about re-reading because there are tons of similar books
which can explain things in intriguing way to leave a lasting impression.
Unless I run out of options in that category, reading more seems a better
choice.

------
skadamou
For me it comes down to diminishing marginal returns. I figure that the first
time I read a book I might retain 50% of what is written. Just the big picture
stuff. Reading through that book again, I might retain an additional 20% of
what the book has to offer. I’ll probably remember a lot more details this
time around but I already had a general understanding of the concepts going
into the second read. With each additional reading after that I may pick up on
some new and interesting nuances that I did not understand the first few times
around but I am really only adding a few more percentage points of
understanding towards some hypothetical “Complete understanding”. With this in
mind, there are really only a select few books that are worth the opportunity
cost of beginning another.

I think that if you are reading to better yourself professionally however,
there is good reason to revisit old topics since a few more percentage points
of understanding might make a big difference when it comes to job performance
relative to others in your field. This idea is probably best on display in
athletics. Take baseball. The difference in skill between a minor league
baseball player and one playing in the MLB relative to the skill level of the
broader population is minuscule. However, to make any money playing baseball
you have to be in the .000001% of the talent pool and thus it is worth it for
minor league ball players to spend a great deal of time for just a few points
boost in there batting average.

------
theparanoid
pg essay "How You Know"
[http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html)

~~~
jnicholasp
Thanks for linking that. I'd read it before, but it was useful to read it
again ;-)

------
bgrohman
"The purpose of reading is not to pass some final judgement on the text, but
to engage with what it has to offer to me now."

Agreed, and I can't help but wonder if an exploration of that topic would have
been more worthwhile.

