In the rules of this (wholly arbitrary, self-inflicted) challenge, I am supposed to only "count" New To Me books/movies. In deference to that, I have not posted every time I watched Fletch. I also abstained from book group in June because they were reading ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, which I read years ago.
But then, I started to get that yearning that I get when it's been too long since I've read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. It's as though I haven't heard from someone I love in a long time, that kind of loneliness and melancholy.
For years, whenever someone asked "What is your favorite book?" I answered "The House of Mirth." And I had a ready explanation of what I loved about Lily Bart and her tragic descent and the loveliness and pain of Wharton's depiction of the era.
But somewhere along the line, 10 or 15 years ago, I realized that I hadn't read HOM for years. And then I realized I was reading BRIDESHEAD REVISITED annually.
I keep revisiting (apologies) the novel because I can't stop thinking about the people in it. (They don't even feel like characters to me, just people.) Moments and scenes and quotations stick in my head as though I'd lived them, not read them. And every time I read it, I am taken anew by some element or line or scene, as though it was completely new to me.
Maybe this is what scholars do? Inhabit a text completely; consume it and commune with it so that they can own it? I can, through the narrow opening provided by this small novel of Evelyn Waugh (and my experience of it) see clearly how and why that would appeal. I would want to be an academic if I got to dissect BRIDESHEAD.
So this is my explanation of why, despite the fact that it's not an unread book, I am counting this rereading of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED towards my goal.
Have you read it? I'd be happy to read it again, and talk about it with you.
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