Good morning (barely), a few small thoughts about coming to books "late".
Conversation
Sometimes when I see people exult about books--be they ones I've written or ones I've recommended--there's an inset apology for coming to it "late," which can mean anything from 3 months to a year or two after the book's release. Post-hype, I think. & it gives me pause!
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It gives me pause because as an author, I cannot easily quantify the delight & relief that a book's achieved a small succession of escape velocities: that it's being read outside of its hype-cycle *at all*. That it's grown legs or wings & gone where my gaze can't follow.
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So I want to establish that it's a good & beautiful thing for *authors* that our books continue to find readers after the first few bursts of marketing-propellant or award cycles have run out--but I'm also a *reader*, of course, & want to speak to that here too.
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As a reader, there is a peculiar pleasure at once quiet & fierce that comes from encountering a book outside the context of its initial reception. (There are different pleasures that come from learning those contexts--I'm still a scholar, for my sins--but that's something else.)
There's a further pleasure in bringing the whole, curious solitude of yourself to a book--reading, not to find out where to situate yourself in a discourse, but to be alone with something--at a crossroads--at the strange intersection of an author's thoughts & your own.
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This is the condition in which we read as children, I think, & a condition that is difficult to experience as adults--but that's all the richer for it when we do, because we've already been formed, we've accrued so much experience to bring to the book & feed it, too.
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There's something to treasure in that, I think; an experience of books outside of time, outside of expectation, outside the rhythms of call & response. It's something worth cherishing, & that, by my lights, certainly needs no apology.
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I'd like us to be wizards to our books, never late or early, finding something crucial & irreplaceable in the encounter one way or another: a seed to sow for later, a stitch in time, a feast, a jewel. Whatever you do with it later--you're not late. You've arrived.
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That's all--have a lovely Sunday! I hope you've got something fantastic to read.
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There is also a wonderful welcoming feeling at finding a new book to enjoy and discovering a community of people who enjoy it just as much.
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I agree with this entirely! (… As someone who as often or not does come to books—including your excellent own most recent one—“late”)
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