I wrote the bones of this post three years ago, when I was recovering from a reading slump. For most people, this diagnosis is not worrying - it means your life is full and you don't have time for frivolities. For me, a reading slump has a darker meaning. Reading is how I understand the world, it's how I soothe myself, it's how I gather the strength to continue from one day to the next. Without it, I'm literally body slamming the world without armour, with my eyes closed and my teeth clamped shut. (You may think I'm exaggerating here, and I can see why you'd think this, but no, dear reader, for once, I am not.)
Bear this in mind as you read on. It may also help you to know I never got any further than a couple of pages into Foucault's Pendulum.
(Devoted readers (yes, devoted) will know that I always read the first paragraph (or the first page if the book was written by Rushdie and measurements like "paragraphs" are relative) of a book before buying it. It is one of the rules I use to avoid becoming a hoarder living in an igloo made of mouldy and slowly decaying books. The other being that I may only buy a book if it is on my to-read list. Or if it should be on my to-read list. Or if I like the author and there is a space on my bookshelf or in the bookshelf that I am forced to buy to accommodate this new book. Or because, like a puppy, the book needs to be adopted. Or - anyway.)
I was standing in the second-hand bookshop (which is conveniently placed to intercept me on my way to my local grocery store). The store always smells like a rancid mixture of old books and liquorice, and I must be honest, is populated by a lot of black spines with red titles or pale spines with swirling fonts. At the risk of being a snob, I have also noticed, over the last eight years, how the contemporary fiction section (sub-labelled the "book group" section) has shrunk to two bookcases, while the romance section has swelled to four. I have never seen a Byatt on its shelves, although Lessing and Meek have made a couple of appearances.
There, at eye level, was Foucault's Pendulum, a book that is definitely on my to-read list. I didn't even bother to read the first paragraph. I slid it from its place and held it to my chest while I pretended to look through the rest of the bookcases. Once home, I placed it on my nightstand, ready to begin reading. But, as you'll remember, I was slumped, so the book sat there for a few weeks, judging me (or at least, reflecting my own self-judgement more clearly than a mirror).
Then, it happened. A sense of agitation that happens when I haven't read for a while. My imagination's withdrawal symptoms when subjected for too long only to movies and TV series. That evening I settled into bed with a cup of hot chocolate and picked up the novel as if it were a valuable relic. I studied the front cover, the back cover; I read the imprint page; I flipped through the pages and smelt them. Then, finally, I began reading the first paragraph.
What was I thinking? To break a summing-summing long sabbatical from reading with Foucault's Pendulum? A book that holds down post-graduate English-literature set-lists like a paperweight? Of all the books to ease my way back into the world where my imagination holds court, without allowing it to start chopping off people's heads.
Looking at the first page now, I see another clue (one that might have avoided this debacle had I thought to read the first paragraph in the bookstore - although, who am I kidding, what difference would that have made?): the epigraph is written in what looks to be Hebrew. Ahhh. It's not me, it's you.
Other clues include the fact that the book was written by Umberto Eco, he of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (which I enjoyed - but mostly because of about two pages where he describes wandering around in a mist-soaked landscape as a young boy trying to avoid Nazis - and which many people did not). Then there's the fact that the third sentence hosts the symbol for pi (yes, the Maths symbol) and ... really, do I need to continue?
The original purpose of this post (I am upgrading from "Point" to "Purpose") was to point out the insanity of breaking my book fast with a book written by a master like Umberto Eco. (And remember that I am no ordinary reader, that books have been for most of my life a prism through which I experience the world, that a reading slump for me means not only boredom but having to face the world alone and without the code to understanding why things happen and how to respond to them.)
What was I thinking? To break a summing-summing long sabbatical from reading with Foucault's Pendulum? A book that holds down post-graduate English-literature set-lists like a paperweight? Of all the books to ease my way back into the world where my imagination holds court, without allowing it to start chopping off people's heads.
Looking at the first page now, I see another clue (one that might have avoided this debacle had I thought to read the first paragraph in the bookstore - although, who am I kidding, what difference would that have made?): the epigraph is written in what looks to be Hebrew. Ahhh. It's not me, it's you.
Other clues include the fact that the book was written by Umberto Eco, he of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (which I enjoyed - but mostly because of about two pages where he describes wandering around in a mist-soaked landscape as a young boy trying to avoid Nazis - and which many people did not). Then there's the fact that the third sentence hosts the symbol for pi (yes, the Maths symbol) and ... really, do I need to continue?
The original purpose of this post (I am upgrading from "Point" to "Purpose") was to point out the insanity of breaking my book fast with a book written by a master like Umberto Eco. (And remember that I am no ordinary reader, that books have been for most of my life a prism through which I experience the world, that a reading slump for me means not only boredom but having to face the world alone and without the code to understanding why things happen and how to respond to them.)
I used to read before falling asleep (and over breakfast and sometimes dinner), but over the last year I have replaced this with series. Which means that many of my dreams (some lucid, which, trust me, is confusing) now feature vampires and zombies, and I get fatally shot semi-regularly. Sometimes more than once. There have also been a surprising number of cameos by bears. Which is actually respite from a recurring nightmare I have had over the last seven or eight years in which one of my favourite and most encouraging teachers in high school tells me how disappointed she is in me and then refuses to acknowledge me, except to tell other people what a disappointment I am. Make of that what you will.
So, I wanted to restart my bedtime routine and I picked up my book and read the first three pages and realised that, although I was pretty sure those three pages were describing the pendulum and its movement, and I knew that pi is 3.142, that was it. I started again. But by the end of the first three pages, I somehow knew less about the book, as I was no longer sure that the pendulum was physically real or whether it was a metaphor, but the prose was very pretty ... and I fell asleep.
I picked it up the next night, because I don't quit. Not when it comes to literature. Reading it again, those three pages did not seem as cryptic. Even "isochronal" fell to my scrutiny. When I am tutoring and we come upon a word my student doesn't understand (kind of a surprise attack, but I'm not sure who's more surprised: the word or the student), I always encourage her to break the word down into its components. So, taking my own advice, if:
- "iso-" means "equal"
- "-chrono-" refers to time and
- "-al" means that the word is an adjective,
then "isochronal" means that the pendulum swings in equal measures. Which makes me wonder if this really needs to be said, since that's the sole purpose of a pendulum. And if you are talking to someone who doesn't know what a pendulum is or what it does (even though they are reading a book written by a polymath and polyglot and, no doubt, other poly-isms), does it really help you to help that reader by using a word like "isochronal", which apparently you need an English degree and an editing career to translate?
(Yes, I know now that Foucault's pendulum is an invention that demonstrates the Earth's rotation, wise ass, but that's not really the point of this post. What is the point? I'm getting there...)
As I mentioned right at the beginning of this post, back when you were a young tyke and I had such promise, this took place three years ago. What was the point and why, out of all the many, many posts I have started and abandoned, did I choose to revive this one? The glib response is that the moral of this post is that you shouldn't read books written by masters like Eco right before you fall asleep and you should always read the first paragraph before buying a book.
Another lesson is that reading is meant to be fun. True, literature is the web holding my world together, but that doesn't mean it needs to be a hard slog. I don't have to read and understand and enjoy every book because it's canon (otherwise Joseph Conrad and I would have a problem). In most cases, life stretching out behind and before me seems long (no matter what people say), but when measured against all the books on my to-read list, it's way too short, so why waste it reading books that don't pass the first-paragraph test?
Finally, for me writing is understanding, whether I'm doing the writing or I'm transforming the words on the page as the reader. I don't understand concepts (or myself) until I have trapped them in a cage of words. Except the cage is the opposite of a cage: it holds things in, but frees them at the same time (I'm doing an excellent job of illustrating my point here). Maybe Foucault's Pendulum and I just met at the wrong time.
PS. Three years later, I have no idea where my copy of the book is, which is odd, because I know exactly where every other book I own is. Make of that what you will.
