Ode to Books Discovered by Chance

The books I love the most are the ones I discovered by chance. It is a realization I had revisiting Possession, where every page reminds me of the first time I read it, of my wonder and admiration then. It was a book I bought on impulse. I was somewhat familiar with Byatt: I had read two of her shorter novels and had conflicted feelings about them. Surprisingly enough, I hadn't heard anything about Possession. I bought it because it was on sale and it had a cute cover. It sat on my shelf for two years. And then one day I read it and was touched beyond expectation.

This is a story that repeats itself over and over again in my list of favorite books. I picked up The Ambassadors because it was dirt cheap. I had never heard of it and I was not in love with Henry James. I received Absalom, Absalom from my mother, who uh, bought it because it was on sale. I hadn't read anything by Faulkner and my mother doesn't have the greatest taste in books, so it's a wonder I even opened it. I found T.S. Eliot by buying a book for someone and reading the first poem in it because I was bored. I bought The House of Mirth in Germany because a. visiting foreign countries makes me buy books and b. it had a beautiful cover. I bought The Handmaid's Tale in Scotland in a '3 for the price of 2' deal together with Never Let Me Go and Beloved. (Without a doubt, the best spent £20 in my life.)  I picked up Middlemarch at the library because it was there. The name George Eliot didn't tell me much beyond "classic author," "woman with male pseudonym" and "not George Sand."

I ended up loving all of these books and so many others I found by accident. I will always remember the feeling I had reading the first page of Absalom, Absalom, the almost painful wonder that there was someone who could write like that and I hadn't known he existed, the fear that I might have never found him, the gratitude that I did, the hope that there were others out there to be discovered. And that, I think, is large part of why these books became my favorites. These feelings are now embedded in them. I can't read Faulkner without remembering that first rush of breathlessness. I can't read Possession without remembering how admiration for Byatt crept on me that first time--I hadn't known you could write about that.

I hadn't known and I am grateful for it. The most beautiful thing I saw in my life was the Cologne Cathedral erupting above low industrial buildings. I was on a train from the airport, on my way to see it, a cathedral that everyone said was beautiful. But no one warned me that you could see it from the train, that you won't have time to prepare because it would just emerge on the skyline and it would look like it had cut its way through the world around it. It was the only moment when I found it breathtaking. Up close, it was just unsurprisingly beautiful.

It's the same way with books: I don't read for the moments anticipated in study guides. I read for those moments when you read a book that everyone had dissected to death, a book you know by heart through cultural osmosis, and suddenly there is a passage that no one mentioned, but that speaks to you like few things ever did. I read for the moments when you open a book you hadn't heard much about and it satisfies a need you didn't even realize you had. I read for the unexpected moment of beauty.

I felt the need to write this out, I am not sure why. There is no conclusion to this, no resolution to make, because it's not like I can set out to find books by chance. I just hope it will continue to happen.

16 comments:

  1. Lovely entry :D
    Possession is also one of my favourite books, although I didn't read it by chance. But I've had the same experience you describe and... it's amazing. Because, at least for me, you don't have any kind of expectations on the book and how each page surprises you because you're enjoying it far beyond you thought, ... it's an awesome experience!

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    1. "you don't have any kind of expectations on the book and how each page surprises you because you're enjoying it far beyond you thought."

      Exactly. I almost always start with some preconceived notions about books I heard of. It's refreshing to be free of that (although I rarely read books by authors I never, ever heard of, so there's still that).

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  2. What a lovely essay! I had a similar reaction reading Cutting for Stone.

    Since you mentioned Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom, I thought you might find this interesting:

    http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/print/ababgwtw/home.html

    Unfortunately, it appears GWTW has been removed from the reading list. Too politically incorrect?

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    1. Oh, that is an interesting link. I was familiar with the second page (the one with the character diagram), but had never read the front page, about the opposing philosophies.

      As to why GWTW wouldn't make it on the reading list, yes, I think part of it is its racism. It's also true that people have forgiven this sort of thing when it comes to some books. But I think GWTW was never a good candidate to receive such a license, because it was never seen as highbrow.* I feel that when it's discussed, it's discussed more qua cultural phenomenon, which is why it's so often treated together with the movie.

      *Even in 1936, the term of comparison for GWTW was not Absalom, Absalom, but Anthony Adverse, another lengthy bestseller, now forgotten.

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  3. I do this all the time! I have so many books, and I've had some of them for so long, and when I finally read them I'm amazed that I had something so wonderful laying around for so long! But yes, so many books bought by chance, so many many books I love :)

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    1. "I've had some of them for so long, and when I finally read them I'm amazed that I had something so wonderful laying around for so long!"

      I know, it's such an awesome feeling. It's like finding money in last season's jacket. That always feels like a gift, even if it was your money to begin with :)

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  4. Oh yes! There is nothing like reading a book with no knowledge or expectations. Such an amazing rush.

    For me the book that is the epitome of the phenomenon you describe is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I grabbed it off my mother's bookshelf when I was a high school student. I needed a book to read in the car on the way to my first visit of the campus of the school that was to become my university. (Don't you think that adds to the poignancy?) I don't think I'd ever heard of Joyce at that point. I just liked the name of the book. It sounded interesting in a way that's hard to recapture once you've heard of Joyce and have heard of the book. Oh those first few pages were a revelation to me and still have that sense of wonder. The way Joyce captures those first literary moments of the moo cow. To my mind it's one of the great book openings in all of literature but I know so much of it has to do with being that high school student in the car meeting a great work for the first time on it's own terms and with no expectations at all.

    But I think the first time I had that moment of discovery was Louisa May Alcott. I still have that cloth bound copy of the three novels in one volume: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men. I had to have been younger than ten when I discovered it on the shelf in my room. I had no idea how it got there or how long it had been sitting there. I was enchanted by the dust jacket and even more by the gold embossed lettering on the book's cover. I fell into the story feet first and I think a part of me is still there. I still have that book on my shelf thirty years later and I still cherish it as one of the best books ever. And I still have that sense of wonder and discovery about the mystery of its origins, which have never been properly explained.

    I do also feel the same way about Possession. I knew next to nothing about it when I picked it up. Only that a friend and fellow English major had loved it. I still swoon over the brilliance of Byatt's characters. I kept having the urge to go and make sure that both LaMotte and Ash were really just made up characters and not really obscure Victorian literary figures I'd just somehow missed. I think that novel most perfectly captures the romance of reading, of discovery of literature. I think it is the quintessential book lover's book.

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    1. Melanie, thank you for this great comment! There are so many things in it I agree with. First of all, I think "meeting books on their own terms" is the best way to describe this and it's the phrase I was fumbling for at some point.

      I can't imagine the impact Joyce would have had on me if I had just stumbled across his books without knowing anything about them. I think I might have loved him then, truly loved him.

      And I agree that Possession is the quintessential book lover's book. True story about my first time reading it: halfway through the book, I googled the poets because I just couldn't believe that Byatt had written entire poems and stories for this book. I thought that maybe, just maybe there were some obscure poets she had used.

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    2. Strangely, I still feel a certain ambivalence about Joyce. Maybe because the next time I cracked open Portrait it was in a class with a prof who didn't like the book much and that attitude sort of seeped in. Perhaps if I'd never read it in a class it might not have lost some of its shine? However, I do think there are some books that are almost impossible for me to like let alone love unless I do read them in a class or with a group because somehow on my own they just remain closed. Dubliners was like that. I began to like it only when I read it in my Joyce class in grad school. I really needed some prodding to help me find a way in. Ulysses, though I should have read on my own. I think I may still love Ulysses but I need to read it-- really read it--at the right time. Falling asleep on the commuter train while trying to speed read in order to keep up with the class' reading schedule. isn't really the best way to savor that novel.

      There was this great detective story I read years ago that was set in Dublin and involved some kind of Joyce manuscript. The detective, a native Dubliner, working-class policeman found himself reading Ulysses to help with his investigation. He fell in love with the book because it was so very much a book about the Dublin he knew and loved. That detective story, whose name I no longer recall and which I can't seem to find on Google, made me believe that Ulysses is a novel burdened by too much academia. People go into it thinking they need piles of concordances and supplementary materials in order to understand and appreciate it; but I think all of that gets in the way of just savoring Joyce's words.

      Google didn't exist yet way back when I was reading Possession for the first time. But if it had, I'm sure I'd have been on it.

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  5. Melanie, I don't know if you've read them, but Nabokov has a series of lectures on literature, including one on Joyce. I found that it was much easier to love Ulysses after having seen it through Nabokov's eyes, seeing what he loved about it.

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  6. This is a beautiful post! I actually discovered Hemingway by accident. I was looking for a book to take with me on a trip last summer, and A Farewell to Arms was sitting on my bookshelf. I honestly can't remember how it even got there, but I picked it up - and when I started reading it, the prose immediately drove me into the story.

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    1. Thanks, glad you enjoyed it :) I might have discovered A Farewell to Arms by accident as well. I really don't remember how I got to it.

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  7. I love this post, you've summed up the greatest part of reading :)

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