Reading Again, or Reading Wrong

Sometimes, while rereading a book, I come across a line I have underlined.

The sentence is not particularly striking. It may even be ordinary. I look at it for a while, unable to remember why I marked it. There is no note, just a very certain line, as though someone who has since left made the decision for me.

The opposite happens too. A passage stops me. I turn a few pages back and forth before remembering that I have read this book already. I even remember thinking it important. I have no memory of this sentence. “Having read” begins to seem a doubtful claim. I know the cover’s colour, remember a few concepts, can mention the author in conversation. Taken together, these look a good deal like the results of reading.

But if someone asks which sentence actually changed my mind, I may have no answer.

This becomes especially noticeable when I read Lacan. First I recognise some familiar words and feel relieved. Familiarity makes the paragraph seem passable, as though recognising a sign meant knowing where I was. On a second reading, I discover that I have not understood what happens between this sentence and the one before it. The words remain. The road no longer connects.

Sometimes I blame the translation, or decide I am missing some background knowledge. Both may be true. They also give me a reason to postpone the text: once I have caught up on everything else, I can return to this page. There is always more to catch up on. The page can keep waiting.

An easier method is to read the difficult parts as something I already believe. I find the unreliability of language, the fractures of the self, a few sentences that seem to defend my hesitation. They fit my difficulties so well that I want to copy them out immediately.

That is probably when I should slow down. I may simply be too eager for a book to agree with me.

I do not want to dismiss the private, accidental parts of reading. A sentence sometimes stays at a particular moment for reasons that may have little to do with the author’s intentions. Months later, I may have forgotten the argument but remember that the sentence kept me company for a while. That use is difficult to put in a notebook. Imprecision need not cancel it.

Writing down an interpretation is another matter. Liking a sentence does not mean I understand it. Feeling that it describes me cannot stand in for the surrounding paragraphs. I have to turn back to those pages and see what I may have skipped to make the sentence fit.

Rereading is therefore often embarrassing. I thought I was revisiting something I knew. Instead I discover how I avoided the problem last time. The sentences have not changed. My confidence in having read them has become a little thinner.

The old underline is still there. I have not erased it. Beside it, I add a question mark. I have not decided whether to ask the book or the person who marked it.