As mentioned before, I've decided to start reading the books I've accumulated but haven't had the time to touch during semester. But after finishing Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (which is an amazing read by the way), I didn't know whether I wanted to read a new book or to revisit one I've already read before.
I think rereading is very important, not just because I'm a literature major, but because you're turned onto how the writer plots and places clues along the way that you'd just thought was a minor point during the first read. It is very elucidating, but also painfully real at times. Case in point: the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset screening at Ritchell's house last Wednesday. There were so many more things I noticed as compared to the previous times I'd been watching them, when I was probably more fond of the premise of the movies than what went on within. Maybe it's that our profs' work has paid off, but we were discussing and really getting into the meat of the movies, further than I'd gone. Or maybe it's just the right moment for me to have come to the films again. It could have been the company too, probing and exchanging views. Who's the romantic, who's the cynic? As long as we don't impose.
While I don't mind revisiting something I've enjoyed before (and many people can attest to this), I have to say that spoilers really, really don't fly with me (as before, heh). I even refrained from looking at the blurb of Never Let Me Go before I got started. And perhaps now I can explain why. For me, texts and films and shows are experiences, and with everything, you only get a first time once. Sure you can go back again and again, but you can never just go back with a complete amnesia, a tabula rasa of that book or movie. I'd wished for some kind of selective amnesia, so that I could go back and watch Friends all over again, without having read somewhere else about who got together, who did what and how it all ended. It's a good thing, that we forget sometimes. Maybe we forget just so our lives won't be a constant rerun of "been there, done that"; we forget in order to remember.
Being a literature major makes me spout words. Whether these words mean anything is another matter.
Got a Craving?
0 comment(s):
Post a comment
<< Home