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35. WE FORGET WHAT WE READ (Dec. 2003)
Here's the truth. We forget what we read. The Great Gatsby? I can't
remember anything happening in it. Something. I remember a mood, uh-m...You
know, rich people, mansions, something. The Idiot by Dostoevsky? I
remember there was a Prince Myshkin and a bunch of women. Something happened.
The book was feverish. And so long. But I can't remember what happened in all
those hundreds of pages and I don't remember how it ended. Don Quixote?
Well, it was hundreds of pages long too and there's this knight Don Quixote and
his servant Sancho Panza and, uh-m, something, I forget. And what I remember I
probably learned from a cartoon. Swann's Way by Proust? Exquisitely
written. Unquestionably one of the great masterpieces. Some aristocrats moving
around. Some love stuff. Can't quite remember...Jane Austen novels? Never read
two or three in succession. You'll never be able to tell them apart. Okay,
there's some women who want to get married, some suitors, uh-m, they also want
to get married. Some do get married. Lots of great language. This is so
embarrassing. No sense talking about more, I can't remember all the titles
anyway. Movies, plays, music-- same thing. That's how we can go back to them and
be surprised by what happens again. Pathetic, isn't it? It's like life. It's
incredible while it happens, and you get all the details-- but later everything
blurs. We live, we die, we read, it's vivid, it's a fog--- that's how it works.
Or, whatever.
I think.
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