The Mechanics of Reading

Why do I read when most novels eventually escape me? The remembrance of being read but not what was actually read and a vague sense of plot. Even of characters, their names forgotten when at the time I was immersed, knew exactly who was who or could identify with them.
Perhaps this occurs because I read too much...? It's only in a very few cases it says more about the novel, because I will persevere until the bitter end if none too keen. Life's too short, you might say, but then I'm of the view that once started something has to be finished. I'd rather read and feel increasingly annoyed than admit defeat, and to give up, the contemplation of it or the temptation to throw the book down and say 'Enough!' comes with a large dose of Catholic-like guilt accompanied by doubt: What Am I Missing? Maybe it gets better... especially if the work of fiction being held before my eyes has won a prize like the Man Booker, been read aloud on BBC Radio Four or praised by a Book Club. What does that say I wonder? About me or the rated reviews?
Perhaps I hope to learn how to write, how others write and more about what I do and don't like as a reader. Yes, it's all that but also escapism, which in a few occasions doesn't work because something or other doesn't ring true or a detail or two jars. The characters or the setting don't work for me nor on my imagination. My attention gets sucked back to the here and now; my concentration wanders to matters which would normally wait until the end of a paragraph or chapter. My whole reading bitty, focused in more parts than others.
Quite a few authors too try to write historically when they may not have either lived through that time or that experience, in that particular country. It can't always be pulled off with an aplomb like Hillary Mantel. Then the prose reeks of an explored idea, rather than as an all-consuming subject which has been lived and breathed and researched, and re-researched. Personally I don't mind the exploratory nature but I do if it's sold (not by the writer) as a form of truth, as in this is how it really was, this is what he was like. Or when modernity seems to have infiltrated the plot or characterization.
Readers aren't all that clever (and I include myself in that sweeping generalisation). Some may confuse entertainment with factual truth, so in that sense writers who choose to make history (and reading) accessible have a responsibility either to make it clear it's just an idea or to do a damn fine job.
The generations approaching reading will have different expectations and different educations: certain events will stretch back even further for them, and I worry that they won't be so discerning as to know what is fiction, what is propaganda, what is a downright lie. Maybe I do them a disservice...but as past events recede only relatively recent events will resonate because anything else is out of their realm of experience or that of relatives or the aged population, which must surely affect anybody's ability to empathise.
Truth becomes fabrication; fabrication becomes truth. There are as many truths as there are individuals, but a collective (and fabricated) truth has the greater potential to cause either division or unity. Do we really want society to have those kind of pockets? Or for us, as a people, to distrust everything and everybody? Or conversely, to have belief in everything we're told, to not question or act out of allegiance or fear?
Question everything. Accept nothing as truth, your truth or anyone's else truth, because truth too changes and ages with time. And truths can be made to fit circumstances. A perspective freely given sometimes no longer applies or applies differently as more details become known or emotions, running high, simmer down. Allow for that and don't be too quick to follow yours or anybody else's thoughts.
Reading then, like the body, is a functional tool. And just like using tools, it takes practise as well as regular upkeep to recognise the individual tweaks your mind needs in its reading matter.

Picture credit: Gas, circa 1940, Edward Hopper

Bound Up

A solemn black-clad girl stares out from the gilt framed picture. Casually positioned in front of ornate doors, her dark dress enhances their golden embellishments and these in turn offset the pale of her skin, which could otherwise have been taken as a lingering illness or the blood drained from some sense of trepidation. Although it still could be, of course, the latter explanation and not as I'm assuming a natural fairness because there's no evidence of bloom in her young cheeks. There's possibly the ghost of a smile, one about to form or one that's fading as if it's been caught in a moment of indecision which her hand clasping the door handle in all likelihood also attests to.
Was she about to make an exit or had she just entered?
Are we supposed to assume she's in the room alone or there's others unseen she's facing? The artist, of course, is an external factor and not part of the picture, that imagined or painted into existence and trapped forever, in spite of the hairlike cracks that will appear to note the years that pass. A true likeness, observers might exclaim if indeed the person is or was once known; or how alluring, how exquisite if the person is not, because the artist has managed to capture something, which cannot be put into words except to say that it has a very human, almost soulful, quality, which in the mouth of each observer means something different depending on whether they think along romantic or classical lines.
That essence of humanness caught in the painting and since conveyed to many has led to more than one assumption as to the girl's character, situation and emotional state. There are some who will not think of her as Marguerite van Mons, as the picture titles her, but as the fictional Effi Briest, for on some imprints she adorns the cover, and so the rightful history (whatever that is) gets mixed up with another's. And this fictional other, Effie Briest, is purportedly already based on a real person.
Yet wouldn't it be strange if there was no divide after all? If these two girls were separated only by their mother tongue and country of residence, like twins unaware of each other yet leading parallel lives. Could Marguerite be of German descent like Effi, or as van Mons implies be only of Belgian blood? Could they look like each other, or not too dissimilar at one stage or another, because girls at ten or seventeen can look alike?
The Belgian city of Mons has had various occupations so a little mixing of blood wouldn't be too far-fetched, though less admitted to possibly, but then 'van Mons' only means of a place i.e. of Mons, and doesn't inform us as to heritage transferred from parent to child. What gives a person their identity anyway – the country of their birth or lineage? My meaning being that Marguerite, since I know little of her, could conceivably have a Germanic background – somewhere, way, way, back; diluted but there all the same. Though according to records of those times it's more likely to be Spanish or Flemish.
Marguerite, however, is the point of the interest and so too is Effi, which leads to the comparison that Theo van Rysselberghe, the artist, favoured realism as did the author Theodor Fontane. Marguerite was a friend's daughter and Effi was based on the daughter of a German aristocrat. Marguerite is flat whereas Effi is fuller bodied because the ins and outs of her life were supplied in fiction and reality; the portrait of Marguerite then provides the image if one refuses to be formed in mind alone and gives the character solidity. Effi will forever be associated with Marguerite, or at the very least Marguerite leaves a trace of herself so that if you chance across her picture without the book you think 'where have I seen you before?' until memory recalls the jacket cover; whereas if you read a page or two from a plainer edition the portrait of her enters your mind because to you that is how Effi has come to look.
Is one made more fortunate than the other by this association? That is impossible to say, even with the hindsight of time. Details and dates can always be changed so that there's more or less similarity, or just plain inaccuracy, to beguile researchers or readers and foster the relation between these two (or should that be three?) unrelated women.

Picture credit: The Portrait of Marguerite van Mons, 1886, Theo van Rysselberghe

Lone Wolf

Paint me a lone wolf, animal or human, in their dead hours. It's not time to hunt. It's not time to eat or sleep, but to think, pace and grow restless. The hours passing slowly, in a dull daze as if the day is humid and heavy, and yet the mind is pinpoint clear. Working too fast, even quicker than the body it inhabits. It wants to get on, to put thoughts into action, or at least to distract its physical self with mundane tasks so they could both be separately engaged yet work as one unit. But it's not yet time. It's far too soon, because a wolf is opportunistic only when the right occasion arises; otherwise they're particular and orderly.
The dead time is dangerous, for then a lone wolf is a threat to itself. It's the waiting...for evening to come, for a new day to begin, for something to be confirmed or materialise, for some question to be solved, for a decision to be made or removed. The brain ticks and circles, the wolf, alone (and free), treads to and fro as if caged and bored by these mental patterns.
The skin underneath the fur itches in response to this restlessness and adds to the wolf's irritation. The animal rolls and scratches itself on the ground; the human roughly drags its fingernails sideways and up and down the same area for longer than necessary, and though this appeases the itch (and the others in other spots that follow) and suspends the futility of life for a bit the questioning returns once its over. A little energy has been spent, but still there's a whole reservoir building up which like dark heavy rain clouds threaten to break: to escape and flood the brain and propel the body to impulsive action. Nothing then ever ends well. Fades out to black. Or perhaps a fuzzy grey or vivid redness.
After, visible wounds will be licked and new hurts will be found. Hurts like regret and what was I thinking; why? Head dropped, tail down. And with vigour now at an all time low bed is the place to stay. Curled up with everything tucked in like a pup or foetus.
Sleep....For in death-like sleep strength will be recovered while the brain is able to remain mostly ignorant to its and the body's deeds, until the mind wakens and begins piecemeal to put those dream flashes together.
But when awareness is present, a certain vigilance is kept over instinct. The animal bides its time; the human, from necessity, has a list of checks and balances to override the urges a hunter has or uses other vices to forget, in a measured way: one pill, one drink, just enough to becalm or numb. Or even focus on another activity altogether. Something that the mind can be inattentive to or care about. It doesn't matter as long as it's engaged (partly or fully) with itself and the actions it commands.
What a real lone wolf does in such moments only a naturalist could say. Perhaps continues to feign sleep, in the hope some prey will come, with slitted eyes, or watches wide-eyed for other aggressors.
Animal or human, however, the lone wolf is not a natural member of a pack, having chosen or had this path imposed upon him. Should this be feared? A wolf acting alone is no more dangerous than a pack, and can even be less so if nervous or timid of the pack mentality, preferring to co-exist peaceably in its own way with contact as and when. Some lone wolves separate themselves for the sake of their health and the good of the pack, though both aloneness and grouping can be causal agents of disconnectedness: of wanting to belong but not; of feeling pressured to belong but not wanting to.
A lone wolf does everything at their own pace, in their time. In that, animal and human, a certain stubbornness is shared in independent thinking and individuality. They cannot be brought to reason; reason must be found through their own endeavours. And masquerading only works for a while, and can, if forced, lead to disorder and a depression of spirits.
Questions may be asked of others but their answers when given prove too confusing although the different perspectives and approaches to dilemmas is interesting, because within these outsiders there are sub-groups: those who rate freedom of mind above freedom of movement, and those who rate movement above mind. The first stay up on the mountain, whereas the second come down to explore.

Picture credit: Fuji Mountains in Clear Weather, 1831, Katsushika Hokusai