Taking My Time

I'm a little embarrassed to note that my current reading bears a striking resemblance to the same current reading of a couple of months ago. And I still have a good quarter of Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary to tackle, that being, I suppose, the centrepiece of it all. The problem here is that there's no problem at all in being so engrossed in the book that I find myself proceeding with an almost deliberate slowness in order to try and grasp the totality of the argument, when the argument is so various in its implications that it's just impossible to do so. I'm now up to the chapter dealing with the Enlightenment and McGilchrist's reading of the period in the light of his ideas about the development of left hemisphere dominance. Every example is a telling one, and makes me think of others, but I can't help but consider in addition my own counter-examples, which I then realise can be assimilated into the general thesis.

I'm similarly proceeding with epic slowness through Derek Walcott's modern epic Omeros, and continuing to cross-reference to Robert Hamner's very useful guide to the poem, Epic of the Dispossessed. I now find myself reading both texts twice in relation to each Book of the poem. Thus, now in Book 5, I originally read Hamner's chapter on this in its entirety, then the Book itself, and am now rereading Hamner on each chapter before reading the actual chapter. This slowing down allows me to be able to relish the poem through the intensity it necessarily brings to the (re)reading of each chapter and is proving especially helpful in this particular segment of the poem in which Walcott's references and geography are particularly wide-ranging (with a chapter centred on Lisbon, then London, then Dublin...)

On top of this I'm having a good time reading Ian Bostridge's book on Schubert's Winterreise in a similar 'bitty' fashion. I play each song and follow with Bostridge's translation, then read the pertinent chapter. After that, it's back to the song. Then I play through all the songs 'covered' so far, following the lyrics and glancing back over Bostridge's thoughts, usually reading the whole of the relevant chapter again. Sort of. It's beguiling to do so.

I don't think I've ever read three (I suppose four) books quite as slowly as this. I keep thinking I really need to be reading a novel as well (the last one was Roth's The Plot Against America) but I fear that would derail me completely. I'm hoping to finish a couple of the books in the next two weeks or so, but I can't say I'll be terribly upset if I not-so-miserably fail.