posted
Last night I started reading Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, which I picked up with my Christmas gift certificate, and had the eerie suspicion that I'd read the story "The Veldt" before. the more I thought about it, the eerier I felt. (hey, it's an eerie story to start with) After I thought about it, I realized that I in fact had read it, in the sixth grade, in one of the "Junior Great Books" compilations. The story I remember, though, was an entirely different set of emotions to me. This is why I had such trouble placing it - for awhile I was sure they had to be two separate stories about a room with lions because of the drastically different emotional response I had had the first time as compared to the emotions I was having now. Frighteningly enough, the first time I read the story, almost 12 years ago, my response to it was a lot more innocent. I don't remember recognizing the sinister characters of the children, rather, I simply followed the plot.
I'm sure some of this difference in interpretation is due to my maturity as a reader, but it made me wonder: do we actually register stories in different ways according to our emotional state at the time we read things? Are the stories I've read as dependent on my own mood as I read them as on any objective qualities they may posess for my interpretation of them?
This may seem very basic, but it makes me curious. Have you read anything that you remember as being drastically different? How do different readings change your opinions on your favorite books?
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quote:do we actually register stories in different ways according to our emotional state at the time we read things?
I agree and I know that I have had different emotional responses to stories that I have read more than once. I have sometimes attributed it to just "not being in the mood for that kind of story," but growth and maturity as a reader are also factors.
Many years ago I first read the Nevil Shute novel On the Beach and while the plot involving the end of the world fascinated me the characters did not reach me. A second reading years later was like reading a new book.
I can imagine a personal experience or two that might well change a story's effect.
So in terms of criticism is the story better if it changes (improves?) because our perceptions mature?
Posts: 440 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
The problem I have had a few times when rereading a book or story that I last read many years before is the missing parts.
Apparently, over time my memory adds in filler scenes that were not actually IN the book! When I reread it, I become puzzled as to where the missing bits went . . .
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I read Waiting for Godot for the first time in college and loved it so much. It gave me this feeling of joy and liberation. Probably because the fact that someone else recognized what it showed made me understand for the first time that I wasn't alone or something like that. Also I found it very funny and playful (or those aspects of it were dominant).
I read it again a couple of years ago and this time the darkly tragic aspects of it hit me more. It seemed a very unhopeful work, and gone was the feeling of joyous liberation. That's the only case I can think of where different readings left me with very different feelings about something. I still did love the play, though. I wish I could see it performed.
On the other hand, I read War and Peace when I was in sixth grade, because I'd heard it was good, and my feeling about it then was that it was just a big soap opera, even if a fairly high quality one. So when I was 30 I thought to myself that I probably wasn't mature enough then to appreciate it fully, so I read it again, and I felt about it exactly the same way. (It may be that I had a bad translation both times. I dunno. I talked to a Russian guy who loves it and he said the use of language was what was so incredible about it. That didn't come through much at all in either of my readings.) Anyway, in that case I was sort of surprised that my feeling about the book had NOT changed over time.
Also lots of other books that I loved when I was 12 to 16 years old, like Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, a bunch of Faulkner stuff, and so on, I don't feel differently about at all. So I don't really know.
[ January 08, 2004, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Screechowl, I LOVE Nevil Shute. "On the Beach", which is probably his most well known work, isn't really characteristic of him at all. I mean the characters are but the situation isn't. Much more like him in general is "The Legacy" which is sold here as "A Town Like Alice". I love that story too.
One of my favorite books of all time, that gets better and better on each rereading, is his "Round the Bend". Some more of my favorites of his are, "Trustee from the Toolroom" and "No Highway" (which was made into a movie with Jimmy Stewart called "No Highway in the Sky".) His stories and people have a quiet affirmation about them. They are just wonderful! He is the greatest storyteller!
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Yeah, I've had that feeling, too. Actually, I've had that feeling over my number of times reading Ender's Game. I come up with new ideas about the story each time I read it...
And there are stories that I liked when I had to read them in Middle School, but later on I realized that they were actually depressing... Notably the Robert Frost poem Bereft. I read it in Middle School and the imagery struck me, and I had fond memories of it... When I reread it in High School, though, I realized what a terribly sad poem it was. Of course, by then I was an angsty teen and I developed a new appreciation for it. ^_^
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The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe was my favorite when I was little, my mother claims that I knew it by heart. I have no memory of this, and now when I read it I have no particular affinity for it, other than trying to remember why I liked it.
posted
I can't think of a time when I've had that experience with a book . . . The Scarlet Letter, maybe. But If I don't like a book, I don't generall reread it, and if I do, I haven't really had the experience of having a drastically different take on it the second time. I have definitely had the experience, though, of finding more in a book the second or third (or fourth) time around. Ender's Game was a big one for me in this way . . . it seemed that I picked up on some new subtlety every time I reread it . . . the first five of six times, anyhow. (Same thing with the Star Wars trilogy, as movies. This might be one measurable sign--for me--of the deterioration in quality of the series, because repeated viewings of the prequels have not resulted in me catching more details that I caught the first time around. Or it could be that I know the story so well that I catch more stuff the first time around now. I know, for instance, that many of my non-Geek friends did not catch the pan to Chancellor Palpatine when Yoda wonders who the other Sith Lord is.)
I'll have to look through my bookshelf at some point and see if anything more dramatic than that jumps out at me.
I have seriously had this sort of experience with movies, however. I have found that it depends on who I watch a movie with. My most intense experience of this was with the movie The War of the Roses. When I saw this movie I was at an age where I very much appreciated dark comedy, and I loved this movie. I watched it like three times in the theater with my best friend, and very much enjoyed it each time. Then I rented it and watched it at home . . . I was living with my parents at the time. Big mistake. I hadn't particularly intended them to watch it with me, they just kinda wandered into the den while I was watching it, but I also had not thought about the resonances between this couple and my own disfunctional parents. As I sat there and watched the movie, I didn't merely not laugh . . . I found nothing remotely funny and could not begin to grasp how I ever could have. At the end of the movie, my mother asked me why I had rented this awful melodrama . . . I couldn't explain to her that it was supposed to be a comedy.
I have since had similar, though less pronounced, experiences watching movies I really liked with someone who clearly is not enjoying them as much. I pretty much can't enjoy any movie I watch with Cor's parents, because they never seem to be enjoying the movie themselves. *shrug* We just have different tastes.
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posted
I had a similar experience with WoTR, Icky. I had gone to pick up a comedy from the video store -- that was my assignment: "Get something funny." I had seen it before, and thought it hysterical.
My then-spouse did NOT. "That was a COMEDY??"
Ironically, even after my own divorce, I still find it funny. And slightly encouraging -- well, at least we were never THAT awful! Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I also can't think of a particular book where I've had a drastically different emotional response on subsequent readings. Often I find that repeat readings will refine a previous reaction, as I come to notice and understand more about the story and its characters. Typically I don't dislike books because of my own emotional response; I dislike them because I find them boring, or I am otherwise unable to get into them. I have found that I was able to re-read some books after maturing some and enjoy them, but since I didn't have an emotional response the first time around, I'm not sure that counts.
Actually, what happens more often is that when I re-read a book or poem I enjoyed when I was younger, I relive the experience I had before. Probably many of the books I continue to re-read I wouldn't enjoy if I picked them up for the first time now, but because I liked them before, I like them now.
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quote: (Same thing with the Star Wars trilogy, as movies. This might be one measurable sign--for me--of the deterioration in quality of the series, because repeated viewings of the prequels have not resulted in me catching more details that I caught the first time around. Or it could be that I know the story so well that I catch more stuff the first time around now. I know, for instance, that many of my non-Geek friends did not catch the pan to Chancellor Palpatine when Yoda wonders who the other Sith Lord is.)
I dunno, I think that the difference is that it's now all done digitally, which takes the life out of it. SUCKS THE LIFE OUT...
But I had a similar experience with the original Star Wars movies, in that I watched them back when I was a kid, and I didn't understand all the Heroic Monomyth stuff about it. I appreciated them on a whole different level after I got all the allegory within...
posted
Ooh - I vividly remember On the Beach. I only read the first chapter or so - I got to the scene where they were brushing the baby's hair and couldn't take anymore.
I should try rereading that one for sure.
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I had a similar experience, Farmgirl, with Animal Farm . A teacher made us read it in 7th grade, and I just didn't get it. Bunch of animals get rid of the farmer and rule themselves. Big deal.
I had to read it again as a junior in high school and THEN did I see what the hullaballo was about.
The difference between 12 and 16 is great.
Another book I had this same experience with was Catcher in the Rye. My mom gave it to me to read the summer I was 13, right before I started high school. I had been a loner in grade school, and was incredibly naive, and didn't really have rebellion issues with my family (I thought all families were like mine).
Then I went to high school, made friends, and saw that not all families were like mine, and mine wasn't all that great. I became very cocky and "rebellious" (I really didn't do much except talk back and fight back).
I read that book again a year later and completely identified with it.
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posted
I've read on the beach many times. It's a great book. It was a prereq reading for a class I took, to make sure you could handle the disturbing (? some people apparently though so) material.
Its hard to imaging living a life where everything would seem so meaningless.
Generally though most books loose something on the rereading. All the little faults standout or the poorly written bits annoy me to know end, since I know what the point is. This is especially true of Snowcrash and The Wizard and the Glass.
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![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
When I reread it, I become puzzled as to where the missing bits went . . .
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
(Same thing with the Star Wars trilogy, as movies. This might be one measurable sign--for me--of the deterioration in quality of the series, because repeated viewings of the prequels have not resulted in me catching more details that I caught the first time around. Or it could be that I know the story so well that I catch more stuff the first time around now. I know, for instance, that many of my non-Geek friends did not catch the pan to Chancellor Palpatine when Yoda wonders who the other Sith Lord is.) 
