An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare’s Sonnets: But what can you do with a man who says he “has read” them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? Yet I think the test has a special application to the matter in hand. For excitement, in the sense defined above, is just what must disappear from a second reading. You cannot except at the first reading, be really curious about what happened...
The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only once) but for a certain ideal surprisingness...We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep are we at leisure to savor the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the “surprise” of discovering that what seemed Little-Red-Riding-Hood’s grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia...
-C. S. Lewis, “On Stories,” quoted in The Christian Imagination, ed. Leland Ryken, 454-455.
5 comments:
I cringe a little at Lewis' snobbishness here - I hate to divide all of mankind into the 'literary' and 'unliterary'. But! It is nevertheless true that rereading is one of my great delights, and I'm sympathetic with Lewis' claim that 'we do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading'. This is why Pickwick is my favorite Dickens novel (to date) - because the plot doesn't get in the way of the characters. And why I'm not a big fan of thrillers. This is not to say that story - plot - isn't important. I do like things to happen in the books I read. But suspense isn't my primary driver.
I just like the word peripeteia. Does that make me unliterary?
No, it just makes you odd. :)
I just googled the definition of peripeteia - it means 'a reversal of circumstances or turning point,' and the English form is Peripety. I think Peripety would be a perfectly lovely name for a little girl...and if she had the tendency to wander, we could call her peripatetic Peripety.
I still think Quandle is the best boy name ever. And if the girl were born first, there could be a myriad of jokes about minding one's Ps and Qs. It has potential.
Or maybe... you should get pet PIGS and name them Peripety and Quandle! That's a great idea. Maybe I'll give them to you for Christmas.
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