on (re)learning how to read

my only resolution this year was to keep a reading journal again.

i started my first one because my college literature professor said everyone should keep a reading journal. it wasn't for credit or even extra credit, but i did it anyway; let us pause here to admire the power an english teacher holds over a certain type of kid.

it turned out i loved keeping a reading journal, and kept doing it after i graduated. i loved it for lots of stupid reasons: because i looked very cool doing it; because i had a lot of time on my hands, frankly; because it seemed like the sort of the thing the charmingly eccentric protagonist of an indie rom-com would do (being nineteen is knowing for sure that you're the protagonist of something and trying desperately to figure out what genre it is).

i also loved it because it helped me to remember things, and even then i had a terror of forgetting. the act of writing in that journal tied certain books and passages to certain times in my life, like wendy sewing peter's shadow to his shoe. the first time i read the count of monte cristo i was living in a trailer in washington state, canning cherries with my best friend, and by the end of every day our lips were stained a joker-ish, hedonic red. i was reading revolutionary road when the two of us made plans to get jobs on a cruise ship and quit on the other side of the atlantic (we never did). when i got my dog--so tiny i could fit him in the pocket of my hoodie and sneak him into class--i was re-reading deerskin, probably on purpose.

(it's difficult to write anything about dogs that doesn't sound like it belongs on a cross-stitched pillow or next to a bumper sticker that says I <3 my Yorkies, but i confess i cried as i copied this line into my journal: a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered; it just is, like sunlight.)

eventually i fell out of the habit of keeping that journal, i guess because i got gainful employment and an internet connection, and also met the love of my life and so was no longer hoping a hot stranger would see me writing in my knock-off moleskine and think "oh, i bet she's so interesting."

but anyway, i thought it was time to try again, and i did. and it's...different.

there are a lot more romance novels on the list now. i have less spare time, so the entries are shorter. and writing is sort of my job now, which means my notes are somewhat more mercenary (slack in second half; telegraphed the twist too early; tonally inconsistent--intentional? interesting effect).

i didn't used to read like that, like a magician sitting in the back row of someone else's magic act, thinking, dispassionately: i should get a fog machine. i used to be in the front row, starry-eyed, knowing i was being tricked and not caring. my old reading journals are full of feelings, reactions, asides, indulgences, little drawings, mentions of my exes, coffee stains, tear stains, to-do lists, song lyrics, so that there was really very little distinction between fiction and reality. it was a long conversation between what i was consuming and what consumed my time.

that's what reading is supposed to be, i think--an exchange, an enmeshment. it's like the inverse of that over-quoted but very fucking good ishiguro line: "stories are about one person saying to another: this is the way it feels to me. can you understand what I'm saying? does it feel this way to you?" if that's writing, then reading is the act of answering: no, it's not like that at all or i hear you or, yeah, that's exactly how it feels.

i've been in a little bit of a writing slump, lately. i mean, i'm writing, because it's my job and i have deadlines, but slowly, somewhat mechanically. i don't feel like an author trying to tell a good story; i feel like a content-maker trying to make good content so that people on the internet will give my content five stars and i will get paid to make more content. i'm not doing magic; i'm just putting on a magic show.

i think the two problems are related. i think i forgot how to read and so i forgot why i'm writing. there's a lot of very emotionally healthy advice about writing only for yourself ("write with the door closed," stephen king says, "rewrite with the door open"), but i think the fun of writing, the urgency, is that it's half of a conversation. it's opening a door, asking a question. does it feel this way to you?

my dog is old now. god, he's old: he's so deaf we have to clap beside his right ear to get his attention, and so blind we have to leave the lights on at night or else he gets confused and winds up in the bathtub, emitting small, dignified huffs until someone rescues him. it used to be impossible to wear him out--he's a border collie, and those of you who know border collies just did a little ah of understanding--and now his hips stiffen up if we go more than a mile.

i'm reading deerskin again. this time, i copied out a line from the very end: if you can no longer run quite so far as you used...then we will run less far together. I was never a runner anyway. it's a romantic line, but it made me think of me and my damn dog, running less far than we used to. it made feel the wonder and strangeness of writing, that a book written in 1993 would make me cry in 2008, and again in 2023, for different reasons each time.

it made me feel like i was in the front row again, starry-eyed, clapping and clapping.

further reading:

• a friend sent me cory doctorow's article on the enshittification of the internet, and it will make you say, aloud, "so everything is getting worse, i knew i wasn't crazy"

• i don't know if i've posted this before, but there's a digital recreation of werner's nomenclature of colors, a 1921 color guidebook available online, and it's my favorite writing cheat in the world. i don't often actually use the nouns mentioned, but just reading the entry on yellowish white (egrets, hawthorn blossoms, chalk) makes me giddy.

• the staff of harper collins are still on strike. a good way to support them is to donate to their strike fund, or purchase books through their affiliate link on bookshop.org

• due to algorithmic forces beyond my understanding (tiktok), kind of a lot of people have been reading and reviewing the novelette that came out last year (the six deaths of the saint). i don’t have anything to say about that except a fervent, mildly alarmed thank you.