Recently I was paging through an old journal and found my notes from a 2008 lecture on Marquez’s great novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, given by Gregory Rabassa at the University of Wisconsin. I was there with my AP English Literature students, who were studying the novel.
Though not lately, I have read this novel many times, so it does not surprise me that I had written down this statement from Rabassa:
“We never read the same book twice.”
The truth of this statement strikes me as a profound paradox. Except in the case of a revised or abridged edition, a novel is a set of static sentences, so how can it be true that we never read the same book twice? It is because of what we bring to a book, of course. As we grow in experience and knowledge, we broaden our scope of comprehension, allowing us to see a book in a new way.
When I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude, I imagine I focused on the Buendia family’s relationships and their hardships, as well as the marvelous images and magical aspects of Macondo. The more I learned about Marquez, how his life experiences and his grandmother’s stories influenced his writing, my concept of the work expanded. Critical reviews and Rabassa’s lecture helped me see even more. But seeing anew is not just an academic process; my changing concepts of mortality, futility, and the weariness of life shadow everything I read now.
I am tempted to take up this novel again–just to see what there is to see this time. I have a feeling I would want to pull Ursula out of the novel and give her the eternal respite she deserves. What that woman endured!
If you have never read a novel (or a collection of poems) more than once, I highly recommend the process. Revelation in this life, it seems to me, is rare. Revisiting a world you once knew and loved in the pages of a book may have more to teach you than you know.
Here’s to seeing anew.