first love

You chance across a book when you are fifteen or sixteen and are captivated by it. Of course, why wouldn't you be! In comparison to your experiences of life at that age most books will sound wiser, deeper. The proportion of your life's experiences to the world's is wildly and amusingly small. Perhaps it's always a mistake to return to one's first loves...

A strange fact: the first book you read by someone is invariably the best, good in a way that is unrepeatable. Well, not so strange given that you often choose to read a book that is usually recognized to be the writer's 'best work' and, despite all the scepticism about reviewers the law of averages suggests that the chances are-and we're only talking about chance here-there will be something to it. 

So, for instance, Salter's Light Years was the thing, at the time. But no matter how hard you try, the rest is tosh. The radically abbreviated sentences..it's all so fake! Then Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son. After that Train Dreams was a huge disappointment, despite the rave reviews (yes, I know, that contradicts what I've said above).  I'm put off from reading anything by M. Robinson or Paula Fox in case it tarnishes the memory of Housekeeping and Desperate Characters. And can anything equal or rival Stoner. Best not to go there.

Is this just laziness? Well, you've read some Roth and some Bellow and some Hesse, so maybe it's not just that.

Knulp. Now, there's something I'll never go back to in case the spell is broken. Reading Walser now and loving it. But what if I'd come across this book when I was seventeen? Would I have dismissed it or just not even have been interested in it? Chance, again. Or would I have read it so that its charm might have worn off by now? There's no telling. That former self is as much a mystery to me now as I am to myself today. But you can also half imagine yourself being intoxicated by Walser then. 

~~~

57. Everything seems to stop at 57 (of course, Arendt starts at '57). I mean, page 57. The charm of Walser is that every third line or so half undermines the previous two. You're not sure if he's making a theological point or commenting on class. Probably neither. 

What if one stumbles on to a first love late in life, though?

Now that I think about it, the whole aim of my writing here on the black sun has been an attempt to return to Wales..er or some dim reflection of the dark country.  One's inability to adapt to the world and changing circumstances would be quite charming, I'm sure, if ti wasn't so clumsy!