How old is your reading soul?
or what reading maturity is
How old is my reading soul? I ask the net of wrinkles that a smile of happiness throws at the corners of my eyes. That’s for sure, I will never exchange my smiles for any wrinkleless youth a marble face devoid of any emotions can possess. What is the purpose of looking young if its price is an emotionless mask you have to wear?
I am not getting younger. Just like my days cannot – luckily – move backward. Each day brings me new layers of my existence. New shadows of my reality. New tones of my personality. I am getting older. But what about the age of my inner reader? Is she also getting older? And why, in my head, is the word “older” intertwined with the word “mature”?
And what does it mean to be a mature reader?
I hope it is not a writing sin to start your newsletter with questions and desultory ramblings. I hope you have quit any hope of getting any answers from me.
I am here, on Substack, as lost in words as you are, to untangle the chaotic yarn of thoughts by asking questions. I am here to get all these flying thoughts ensnared in my questions. I am here to let my thoughts cool down and take a more distinct shape.
What is a mature reader? I look at books and wonder whether I am a good reader. Whether I am a capable reader. Whether a demiurgic work of writers was not for nothing, and I deserve all the effort.
I am not a consumer to begin with. Or at least not only a reading consumer. I assume my part in the creative process of letting books stay alive. I am eager to enter the dialogue all writers have been holding with each other for centuries.
I am eager, but am I mature enough as a reader to do it? Has my reader’s eye been trained enough to catch the behind-the-line conversations writers have been holding? Am I not too lazy to interrupt my reading process in order to grab the tail of another book, hiding in the one I am poring over right now?
Reading is a pleasure. It definitely is.
But it is also work. Even if you want to say, “No, it is not.”
Because work and pleasure are not antonyms as one may think. They coexist, and they can coexist happily if we just let them do it. Their union, of work and pleasure, if you have already forgotten what this “they” replace, bears the most creative fruit one can only aspire to possess: personal growth.
And I truly believe that we grow through work and pleasure. Eschew one element from this equation, and all you will get is a dull and stale grayness of stagnation.
We can – and probably should – revel in a book and ask ourselves all sorts of questions while reading it at the same time. What does this mean? What is that about? Why is it written like this? And to what other authors is this writer speaking?
While the many-syllable word intertextuality may intimidate us with its academic aplomb, the connection between books has existed forever. (Let’s just admit, by the way, that the word “forever” is not less scary, for how can one measure “forever”? What metrics to use? How deep to dig?)
But it was the twentieth century with its literary experiments that whispered a special word, intertextuality, to define this centuries-lasting relationship between books.
Julia Kristeva came up with this term, and postmodernists, some of whom were longing for the past, have encouragingly accepted it and created perfect illustrations of what intertextuality is.
But what is intertextuality?
The easiest way to answer is just to repeat these words: a connection between books.
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”
– T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
“For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.”
– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
But what kind of connection? you are wondering, probably floating in already hazy summer days. And a riddle I have for you. Tell me, please, what do Stephen King, Charles Dickens, and Lucy Maud Montgomery have in common (besides the fact that they sit high on my favorite writers list)?
“If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.”
– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“She was unaware that she was rubbing her bloodied hands against her dress like Lady Macbeth, or that she was weeping even as she laughed, or that one hidden part of her mind was keening on her final and utter ruin.”
– Stephen King, Carrie
“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it.”
– Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
All of these three writers bow their heads to the genius of Shakespeare and invite his famous texts to their own creations. While Dickens and King name directly two bard’s tragedies, Montgomery opts for a more delicate allusion. And yet, the three of them feel an artistic urge to mention Shakespeare in their stories.
Why?
What for?
But most importantly, will our reading process be impoverished if we don’t recognize these references to Shakespeare or don’t even bother thinking about them? What if we just glide through these mentions, so absorbed in the stories themselves?
These are the questions that get us back to the beginning of the newsletter, where I was pouring on you some other questions about reading maturity.
Accepting the idea that books are not isolated from each other is reading maturity, I believe. Embracing our readers’ role, which is to get as much as possible from what is written, is reading maturity. And considering reading books as a creative process is also reading maturity.
Okay, you nod, still flying in the feathery clouds of doubt. Assuming that there is this connection, and it is our role to find its traces. How do we do this?
My answer is simple.
By, first, reading a lot. And then by rereading and perusing and thinking and pondering. By taking notes. By considering reading as pleasure and work. In other words, by taking your reading life seriously.
Okay, you are still not very convinced, and what if I am wrong?What if I see something that doesn’t even exist?
And here, I am intentionally inviting Marcel Proust and his madeleine cookies.
“ ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.”
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
The beauty of reading literature is that there aren't and never will be right or wrong answers. If a particular feeling imbues your reading process, you don’t fight this feeling but let it bloom and look at its flowers trying, just as Marcel Proust did, to catch the tail of some vague memories.
If one book reminds you of another, if one book makes you think of everything you read before, you don’t second-guess your inner reader but keep toying with these thoughts, asking yourself more and more questions. What reminds me of this? Why? What does this mean?
Why is Carrie compared to Lady Macbeth? Who is Lady Macbeth? What was her story? Is Carrie’s story like Lady Macbeth’s? And what about blood? Bloodied hands in Shakespeare’s tragedy and King’s horror novel?
Don’t forget, what you feel is legitimate. And sometimes, questions are more important than answers. And you don’t have to have answers right now. Probably, you just need to read Macbeth again. And then Carrie. Again. And find your answers. Or ask new questions. And revel in this never-ending process of reading, asking, reading.
Learning about reading’s vast potential fills my heart with excitement. The manner in which you perceive symbols and signs in an author’s writing (and can sometimes predict future scenes!) inspires me greatly, plus helps me realize authors undoubtedly desire such close reading.