Letter to the Editor: In Defense of Rereading

“If reading is about a relationship with a text, then my subsequent readings represented different relationships. As I changed, the book changed. I was a different person reading a different book. I am not even sure it is accurate to call this rereading.”

I was once camped out on an island off the coast of Belize for several months. This was over 30 years ago and before many such islands were bought up and developed, mostly by foreigners. The approximately five-acre island was about 20 miles offshore and was primarily used as an offshore fishing camp. There was no electricity or running water.

I spent most of my mornings free diving and spearing fish, which I would clean and eventually cook for supper. Often, I would paint studies of the fish as soon as I could, while their colors were still vibrant. I even developed my own way of making crude studies and notations of underwater life. The more I dove, the better a spearfisherman I became. And the more I studied and sketched the underwater world, the less bewildering it seemed. This was my routine, sometimes for weeks on end.

I had only one book with me on the island, and it was Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. I would read it only at night, by candlelight, and often only a few pages at a time. Upon finishing the book, I began all over again the next night. And, upon finishing it a second time, I began reading it again for a third time.