Bleak House of Memory and Egocentric Nostalgia

"... Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and, heralded by the remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous,and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes."
--Bleak House

One of my favorite passages from a Dickens novel I love dearly, but have never read.

Recently, an insightful and honest essay was written by a French professor of literature, Pierre Bayard. It is titled, "Comment Parler des Livres Que l'on n'a pas Lu." (How to Talk About Books One Hasn't Read) It is a clever discussion of the pressures of literary society, a biographical account of his slack nature when it comes to reading, and a refreshing confession. I found it refreshing, anyway, because I have a degree in comparative literature, and there are numerous books I have merely skimmed. Added to those are the volumes of novels and literary theory books I avoided altogether; which only touches the surface of the depths of literature I have read but since forgotten. Bayard's essay falls into the category of the unread, but with his open blessing, I feel I am qualified to at least reference it here.

Like Bayard, unread works don't render any pangs of guilt for me. I know enough about them from class discussions, essays of literary criticism, and social references. Besides, I'll get to them when I'm elderly and have poor circulation. Then I will wrap myself in an afghan and read away the afternoon without feeling the slightest bit guilty that I'm indoors not getting any exercise. I may even drink Brandy and read Proust. Well, maybe not Proust. I'm not sure when is the appropriate time in life to read Proust. But I will one day be very old and I'm sure I'll read more, then.

Most troubling for me is the category of the livres que j'ai oublies. These forgotten are a plague upon my conscience. It calls to question my capacity to absorb information, I suppose, but it isn't that aspect that I find disturbing. It is the idea that if I can discuss a work of literature that I have not read much in the same way as I can discuss one I have read, and feel that I can knowledgeably and articulately embrace both books with the same confidence-if that is true, (and believe me, it is) what, then, did I gain from the read book? When enough time has passed, I will only be able to remember the essence of what I read, anyway. I may hold on to certain passages, and I may recollect a certain nostalgia that circulates the time and place I read the book, somewhere deep in the files of my memory. But it isn't as though we photocopy pages into our brains. We can only absorb in parts, then process and cross process. Egocentric nostalgia looms brightest on that distant horizon of the past; the one that renders us "well read."

When I was a girl of fifteen I kept a small black and white portrait of Charles Dickens in a silver picture frame. I saw him as a beacon of enlightenment, and I poured over the passages of Great Expectations over and over again my ninth grade year. I set about reading more of Dickens' works, but Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol didn't have the same effect, and I was satisfied to skim through to the ends of both. When I discovered Bleak House in college, I was more interested in finishing papers, and hadn't the time to read Dickens . I was, however, infatuated with the title. It seemed to represent my current state of mind, and I made a leather bound copy into an inspirational ornament for my desk. It reminded me of the small portrait of Dickens from my teenage years; the lost angst of adolescence. I never got around to reading it. I can see it in my mind's eye, covered with newsprint in my mother's attic. It holds the dust of my twenty-second year.

It's funny, I don't remember details, or specific passages, in most of the books I've read. I can't recite dialogue from more than two or three; I don't have a clear memory of The Story of the Stone, for example. What I do recall is that I read this particular book during the Fall, and sat on floor pillows near the window in the living room. I drank Jasmine tea and made small notes with a green pen. None of this matters of course, except to explain my pursuit of sensory pleasures (like wine) as opposed to strictly intellectual ones. They are much easier to hold onto.

The pleasure of reading for the sake of reading, and not for academic purposes, was not a luxury I could afford until graduation. I can at any time visit my mother and salvage my once burdensome copy of Bleak House, and read it and feel satisfied that I have another notch in my belt of acquired literary knowledge. I will then know, with confidence, that I can speak of it with bold recognition when it comes up in conversation (and I'm sure it will). Perhaps I'll be able to remember, even ten years on, each character in all his intricacies. That would certainly make me glad I've invested so much money in fish oil and blueberries.

Or maybe, regardless of how sharp my brain or how high the intellectual stakes, I will have in my memory only that I read the book while drinking the last bit of Cotes du Rhone, sitting in my grandfather's green chair after a hard rain.