Lit Bits & A Bit About Re-Reading

• Flannery O'Connor's letters to Betty Hester are unsealed and...Maud has the scoop.
• Book Fox interviews with Rattawut Lapcharoensap, whose short story collection Sightseeing I found quite good and had planned to talk about a little later in Short Story Month. Super-upside: a forthcoming novel.
• Ed is "away" for two weeks and we don't quite know where since BEA doesn't start until the 31st, although he's been quite mysterious about it. We're taking wagers (book deal? blog deal? job as editor of print book review for major newspaper? what? what?) He has lined up an eclectic group of guest bloggers so tune in to the coverage over the next two weeks. Will there be ranting? Or will it be a decidedly quieter, calmer, two weeks?
• Alan DeNiro talks poetry (poetry!) at the LBC amidst talks about his divine short story collection Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
• I almost peed my pants this morning and it is Tod Goldberg's fault.
• There are so many new, new, new books to read which I'm eager to do -- but I've had a hankering for some re-reading. My talk with Antoine Wilson reminded me of my original love for Nabokov, so I want to revisit him. Again. Always something new with Nabokov no matter how many times you read. Short Story Month has reminded me of all the short story collections I've read and loved -- and those I never quite finished.  I'd like to re-read those too. I think here of Barthelme. Of Hemingway. Of O'Connor. There are some big-deal (big as in important, not as in advance) books that I read years ago and I suspect I could learn even more this time around. I think of Murakami's earlier stuff, even David Mitchell's. I could easily take a dip back into early Pynchon. The first few novels of Graham Swift.  A delicious month of afternoons reading nothing but James & Dostoevsky. A week spent lingering over early DeLillio & Amis (Kingsley and Martin).  Saramago & Cortazar. Yet, it seems near impossible to find a way to fit them all in. Why this seemingly urgent need for books of the past? This need to hunker down for a month or two with nothing but those books, to re-emerge fortitifed at the end of my break?  Not sure. Yet, since I simply cannot spare two months of downtime, I'll have to squeeze them in wherever I can.  If you were to re-read, where would you start?

Comments

[Darby]

Books I'm looking forward to re-reading (someday) include:

- Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov. I decided last year to read the big D's last five big novels in order, mostly because I wanted to re-read Brothers in some sort of context. I read it originally in high school, and loved it, and I'm sure it's one that's going to mean so much more when I read it today. And though I just read (for the second time) Crime last year, I'm sure the third time is going to be a charm.

- Dhalgren. I tackled it a couple years back and loved it, but I don't even think I knew what I was dealing with, even when I was dealing with it. I suspect it's well worth a second read. (And, for some reason, I feel like once I started it, even though I finished it, I never really left the book...)

- Infinite Jest. One of these days...

- To the Lighthouse. I think I completely missed it when I read it the first time. I'd like to give it another shot.

- V. If you ever do feel like re-dipping into early Pynchon, my arm could be twisted into getting me to re-read this one, for the sake of the conversation. (Sometime after I do Mason & Dixon and Against the Day, though. So, check with me in 2013?)

- Probably many others for many other reasons.

[callie]

Ah, Dhalgren. You are a better reader than I -- I still haven't tackled it. Picked up a lovely used copy of it a few weeks ago though...so now it looms in eyesight.

I'll keep you posted on Pynchon. V. in particular...that's where I'd start my Pynchon re-reading. Of course, I've not done Against the Day either...which seems silly because I rushed out to buy it immediately upon publications. For naught...at least for now.