When the Re-read Affair Ends Part 1

Goodbye to Old Friends

By Eric Olsen

There are certain books I’ve read again and again over the years, old friends I like to check in with now and then. Among these are Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; The Cider House Rules by John Irving; and the first three of the Arkady Renko novels by Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square. I reread these particular books as well as several others for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the writing in all of them is, as far as I’m concerned, first-rate. I like to think that a close reading of good books, and then a close rereading, and maybe a close re-rereading, with attention and care, can have a salubrious effect on one’s own writing. I read these books again and again, in other words, in part because I never give up hope that some of the  good writing will rub off.

Or as John Irving put it in the June 10, 2012 New York Times Book Review, “When I love a novel I’ve read, I want to reread it — in part, to see how it was constructed.”

The books I’ve mentioned above, you will notice, are all quite long. I like long novels. When you buy a big, fat book, you’re getting more words for your money, which translates into more pleasure per buck, if it’s a good book. Crass, I know, but what can I say?

And these books all tell stories. I’m a sucker for stories. I realize that there are writers these days, and the lit crits who praise them, who think that story is bourgeois and that a truly important work of literary art must dispense with such conventional and petty considerations as comprehensible plot with a beginning, middle, and end and all that. But give me a good story any day, with good guys and bad guys and maybe a boy meeting a girl and losing the girl and then, after many trials and tribulations, getting the girl, unless it’s a tragedy, in which case, of course, everyone dies, or ends up living in a double-wide in Texas.

These books also portray other places and other times. Earthly Powers spans decades from the early 20^th century to the 1980s and takes place all over, mostly in Europe, but also in Malaysia, Morocco, and even the U.S. Catch-22 takes place in Italy and on an island off the Italian coast during WWII, while The Cider House Rules is set in New England in the early Twentieth Century. The three Arkady Renko novels take place in Russia and Western Europe just before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

And note, too, that none of these books involves vampires or zombies, or historical figures who fight vampires or zombies or who are themselves vampires or zombies.

That I’ve read these books so many times I can now remember sizeable chunks of the narratives never seems to be a problem. I think the human brain is hard-wired to enjoy hearing the same stories over and over. What kid, after all, hasn’t asked mom or dad to “read it again” before bedtime? And before writing was invented, wasn’t telling or hearing the same stories over and over a way to build community and transmit culture and information? And of course, who hasn’t sat at a bar with an old friend and started the conversation with a, “Say, remember that time….”? Which usually leads then to the retelling of an oft-told tale of youthful indiscretion or stupidity.

Even the fact I know whodunit in the case of whodunits such as Gorky Park or Red Square is not, for me, a problem. I simply pretend I don’t know whodunit, and read blithely on. Besides, often the best whodunits start out with the reader knowing whodunit, and the fun is following the trail — even if you’ve been along it many times before — to apprehension and conviction and, in the end, justice, unless of course it’s a postmodern whodunit, in which case the end is injustice.

In Gorky Park, Arkady Renko is quite certain early on that the evil American capitalist bastard John Dusen Osborne (think Mitt Romney with a glass of chilled vodka) committed the murders in a park in Moscow that spark the action. The real mystery is the evil bastard’s motive, and the challenge Renko faces in pinning the crimes on the guy. But even knowing Osborne’s motive and the fact that in the end… well, I won’t tell you the end, in case you haven’t read it but plan to…. But even knowing the end doesn’t spoil the fun, at least for me. I always enjoy the ride.

Anyway, not long ago I decided it was time to reread Catch-22, a novel I’ve loved since I first read it during our country’s forays into nation-building in Vietnam via carpet-bombing, napalm, and Agent Orange. At the time, I was involved in various anti-war movements and so naturally I identified with Yossarian and thought his take on the absurdity of war was spot on and directly applicable to our nation’s endeavors in ‘Nam, and now perhaps even more so to our current misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So I was surprised to find myself quitting after reading only to page 13 of my Dell paperback. I’ve owned several copies of the novel over the years, most of which have disappeared, loaned to friends I suppose, left in hotel rooms, simply evaporated. The Dell paperback is the only copy I seem to possess at the moment. I bought it used for $2.50, as I can see from the faint penciling on the inside cover. On page 13, I came to the following:

“You’re a chaplain,” he exclaimed ecstatically. “I didn’t know you were a chaplain.”

“Why, yes,” the chaplain answered. “Didn’t you know I was a chaplain?”

“Why, no. I didn’t know you were a chaplain.” Yossarian stared at him with a big, fascinated grin. “I’ve never really seen a chaplain before.”

The chaplain flushed again and gazed down at his hands.

With that, I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. So what was my problem? The book hadn’t changed, obviously. It was just as brilliant as ever, Yossarian just as alert to the absurdities of war and of governments gone mad. But I had changed, apparently. I suppose this has been a learning experience, then; I suppose I’ve learned something about myself, or about my attitude about David Mamet dialogue. You see, I found myself thinking how this bit of dialogue on page 13 reminded me of the dialogue in a David Mamet screenplay. I guess I have issues with David Mamet dialogue, or “Mamet-speak” as it’s known, which I apparently didn’t have the last time I’d read Catch-22.

Mamet’s a genius and all that, I know, but his dialogue, which had once seemed quite clever and artful to me, now seems self-indulgent and contrived, and I was suddenly daunted by the prospect of more of the same in the 463 pages of Catch-22, and no matter that Catch-22 was released when Mamet was about 14 and ten years before his first play. I ought to be kvetching about Heller-speak, I guess, but what does logic have to do with any of this? No, it’s Mamet who’s to blame….

And worse, I found myself picturing Yossarian played in the screen adaptation not by Alan Arkin, but by Joe Montegna, and inexplicably, the chaplain now played by Lindsay Crouse, Mamet’s wife, rather than Anthony Perkins. It was all too much. I couldn’t go on. And I may not be able to until I can somehow shake this image of Lindsay Crouse as the chaplain….

Coming up: What happened when I tried to reread Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess for the umpteenth time.

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Ever had a similar experience with a beloved book?