A Question Of Detail

Finishing The Stand I was struck by just how good the ending is and just how much I had managed to forget about it since my long-ago first reading of the novel. Which was pretty much everything. Indeed, I vaguely thought that the last section was going to be a bit predictable and perfunctory - which is why I couldn't remember anything - and was pleasantly surprised at the strength of the chapters centred on Las Vegas and the Stu & Tom return to Boulder coda of the final stretch. The only way I can explain my oddly thorough forgetfulness is through the assumption that the supernatural apparatus shows through most obviously in Book 3 and my younger self was going through a stage of dissatisfaction with this aspect of King's work and sort of switched off to the merits of it all. Or possibly I didn't have the staying power for the epic back then and read the final chapters too quickly simply to have done with it all.

Thinking about this today led me to an odd moment of illumination apropos of how Tony must have read the novel in even earlier days. It forcefully occurred to me just how much of a man for details of the plot (of any work, including films & musicals) he was. He'd frequently remind me of specific moments or scenes in stuff we'd both encountered and harp on about these in a way I found faintly tiresome and broadly pointless. I remember a lot of this in relation to King's stuff in general but most of all with regard to Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time sequence - the twelve novels comprising which he'd borrowed from me soon after we finished university. I suppose this was the most obviously genuinely 'literary' work we had in common and he was always on about particular details, especially with regard to the early novels in the sequence. So this led to my moment of insight: I reckon Tony saw novels as things he needed to, in some sense, learn. He needed to remember exactly what happened as a kind of proof he had assimilated them and they were now of use to him, they were worth something in terms of what he could remember of them. In contrast I've always regarded what happens to me in the process of reading the whole point of the exercise. I don't care much for plot detail unless it somehow really counts in enhancing the process. And I'm happy to forget a novel, a play, a poem so I can enjoy it all over again when I return to it later - usually a lot later.

Of course, there are texts, especially notably elliptical, nuanced ones, for which a grasp of detail is essential in terms of a solid general understanding - The Great Gatsby springs to mind. And when I'm teaching a text I strive to have a reasonable handle on all the details. But I'm often struck when teaching quite well known stuff, especially Shakespeare, of how much I've forgotten, or never bothered to pin down in the first place. At the moment I'm enjoying teaching Hamlet (yet again!) and I keep being surprised by fairly major bits & pieces that have managed to escape me. Like his dad's ghost popping up in the bit with his mum towards the end of Act 3. This manages to surprise me every time I teach the play, or watch it, for that matter.

Happy final thought: I really must get round to buying the Music of Time novels again (since I never got my boxed set back from Tony) and reread. What a joy that's going to be, insya'allah.