Close Reading

It's taken me a heck of a time to read Praise of Folly. That's a measure of how busy life has conspired to make me recently. I think it took me only a couple of days to read it when I first did so, back in the 70's. It is, after all, hardly a massive tome, though one of great weight for other reasons. But I must say I think I enjoyed it this time round a good deal more than the first time.

This has nothing to do with having developed a greater understanding in the intervening years or anything of that nature. I don't think I've come away with any profoundly new insights. But this time round I've had time to relish the fine detail of the text in a way I denied myself all those years ago when I read it so quickly. Since I've never really had that much time to settle with the book this time, I've tended to just focus on the passage at hand in the fragments of reading time available - a paragraph over a ten-minute cup of tea in the canteen - that kind of thing.

And it has worked wonderfully well, I suppose assisted by the fact that there's little in terms of forward momentum involved in Erasmus's squib. It goes nowhere but circles remorselessly round itself, playing with its ironies in an often dizzying fashion - except going as slowly as I did there was no chance of getting at all dizzy. It was also pleasant to let myself linger on the plentiful footnotes in my old Penguin classic. Now all I have to do is to read the chunky Letter to Martin Dorp which is part of the same edition and I'll consider myself ready to move on and try and do a lingering Trollope some justice, having unkindly, unjustly, unconscionably neglected the great storyteller.