What’s the use of reading a book if you can remember nothing or only very little about it afterwards?
This is the intriguing question posed by novelist James Collins in “The Plot Escapes Me,” an essay he wrote for the September 17, 2010 issue of
The New York Times. “I have just realized something terrible about myself: I don’t remember the books I read,” he confesses. “Nor do I think I am the only one with this problem. Certainly, there are those who can read a book once and retain everything that was in it, but anecdotal evidence suggests…that most people cannot recall the title or author or even the existence of a book they read a month ago, much less its contents.”
Still, Collins says this hasn’t stopped him from reading books, and he tells us why: “One answer is that we read for the aesthetic and literary pleasure we experience while reading. The pleasure — or intended pleasure — of novels is obvious, but it is no less true that we read nonfiction for the immediate satisfaction it provides. The acquisition of knowledge, while you are acquiring it, can be intensely engrossing and stimulating, and a well-constructed argument is a beautiful thing.”
Read James Collins’ “The Plot Escapes Me” in The New York Times now!RELATED READING:In “Goodbye, cruel words: English. It’s dead to me,” a tongue-in-cheek essay he wrote for the September 19, 2010 issue of
The Washington Post, Gene Weingarten laments what he considers the death of the English language after 1,617 years of long illness. “The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of
The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the ‘youngest’ daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their ‘younger’ daughter.”
Read Gene Weingarten’s “Goodbye, cruel words: English. It’s dead to me” in The Washington Post now!
