P: Something I, genuinely, don't get.

[Mark Kohut]

Janeites steadily read and reread Austen's works and talk about them. This
is a special kind of cult-like aspect of the great Jane. I know a couple
and they say "without guile", they notice something new every read. Some
little things re characterization, say, her profound insight into simple
human nature for example
a human nature we all share; some bigger things--the play within the story
in *Mansfield Park*; the ethical choices and their results worked out over
half-a lifetime in the history
of the characters in* Persuasion; *the 'mannered hatred' between so many in
all the novels.

Some Proustians endlessly reread that genius, since his insights are as
good as endless in our pendant world.

Ron Rosenbaum said that the two writers--the only two--he could endlessly
reread are Shakespeare and Nabokov. He seems to literally mean, unlike
Janeites and Proustians, that
he can't ever quite "get" them totally. (Janeites and Proustians get their
writer; it is a matter of feeling more and seeing with more perspective or
changing perspective. And, of course, this
way of rereading applies to many another genius, who is richer on the page
than we can 'remember'.)   (I engaged with him online re Pynchon and he
said, he repeats himself, meaning thematically
and by going on sometimes too long for his themes, I inferred. I think he
is wrong, of course but we know (one of) my many faults).

What I genuinely don't get here on the Plist; I know there are thousands of
other great and simply good and interesting books to read, I try to read
some of them too. I know we all have full lives
to lead, some working hard---"it's about Work", as Alice W is always
saying--others being 'creative' and alive and all.

But why aren't we all simply reading, even just ten pages a day, (which is
how I read Proust while busier than Satan), one of Pynchon's works? One
that isn't---or it could easily still be--Gravity's Rainbow?
Words, lines, scenes stick with me anew during my quotidian days. Like my
grandson learning new 'popcorn words' as they call them, some stick with me
anew. My earlier reading perceptions get
relived, renewed or (usu) slightly changed and reunderstood.