ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDENT LEARNS HOW TO READ
I think the reason I have not been reading or watching films much lately is because of how I have latently fetishised the act. I am so concerned with digesting and memorising everything in preperation for some imaginary test that I end up not savouring the process at all. Sometimes I suffer months without reading, because I have made it a chore for myself: summarise and analyse after each section. Understand the text better than all the critics and the authors themselves. Find the secret of life within and link it back to everything else I have ever engaged with. If I was immortal, there is nothing I would like more than to sit A-Level classes for every book or film I ever came across, but I am not and I need to become comfortable as a Jack of all trades at best, because it is far preferable to the paralysis as the Nothing of none. I must not let the need to understand everything prevent me from learning anything at all.
On that note, today I am starting The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, which I first read far too young because my Year 6 teacher had recommended it to me after my 10-year-old edgelord self asked her for the darkest book recommendation she had. I think I expected something more like Stephen King... In all fairness, she did say it wasn't age appropriate, but when has a kid ever listened to that?
It has been over a decade since I last read this book. As a child, I did not take copious notes or try to unravel the text sentence by sentence, but still I can recall the broad storyline and themes. Of course I inevitably missed out on a lot oweing to my youthful naivety, but the foundations are intact, even now. In contrast, my memory is far hazier for the some 80 books I read in 2023. I suspect this is purely because I did not let any of them sit, season my mind, before ripping through the next tome, just to tell myself I had done it.
I do not think writing dissertations about every single thing I read will benefit me as much as simply slowing down. Of course I will still engage intellectially with the art I experience, that that is just it. I have to let myself experience it first, before attempting to conquer. And sometimes, I need to remind myself, conquest is far less important than enjoyment.
Here is to a new approach, and hopefully a more enriched and satisfied mind.
