I still remember it clearly--it was a romance novel, hardcover, wrapped in the clear, crinkly plastic that libraries use to keep dust jackets from getting dirty. There was a horse on the cover, or maybe it was a lake. I think there were trees? It was definitely a yellow cover. No, it was orange, but the title was yellow. Maybe. The main character's name started with an "L." Lucy or Lynda or Leann or something. Wait, no, I think her name was Kate, but she had a sister named Leann. And a brother named Tony. I'm sure I remember a Tony.
As a perpetual re-reader, my inability to recall any concrete, searchable terms for this book infuriates me. Of the things I can remember about it, not a single one helps me or the librarian or the omnipotent Google to help me find it again. I know I read it in the summertime, because the air conditioner in my parents' house was turned up so high that I could hear it rattling in the window frame, and it made my fingertips cold. I know that I checked it out of a local library on a bright, sunny, clear-as-forever day and that I dropped my library card in the mud because I was watching kids play catch in the parking lot and stumbled over a curb on my way inside.
I know, too, that it was exactly the book I needed at exactly the moment that I read it, because that's an unmistakeable feeling that sticks with you, and maybe even lives on the pages long after you've returned it to the library, two days late, and infects the next person who takes it home and cracks open the yellow-or-possibly-orange cover.
I do not, however, know what the damn book was called.
Unfortunately, I have wandered the stacks of that same library countless times since, sometimes on equally bright, clear days, looking for this book I barely remember but cannot entirely forget. Unless that "unmistakable feeling" suddenly turns into a giant flashing strobe light with a neon sign saying, Here it is, you dummy, I don't know how I'll ever find it again. And I desperately want to read it. I think. I mean, it was a really awesome book the first time...maybe. I remember it was perfect at the time, so that means it's got to be good. Really good. Probably.
The story of This Half-Forgotten Novel comes back to me in still frames and frozen phrases. There was a horse ranch, a girl who'd just buried a family member, a rugged horse trainer who steals her heart. There were troubled teenagers and a gap-toothed farm hand and possibly a snowstorm. There was a pack of wild mustangs, running free in the Montana mountains, and the way the author described them took my breath away. I stayed up all night, sitting on the living room floor and making notes about the mustangs in a steno pad and falling so hard and fast for this story that I spent the whole next day physically in smoggy, stuffy New Jersey but mentally on a mountain in Montana. It was wonderful. And I so very badly want to experience that wonderful again.
But, I can't help but ask myself, what if I do find it? Will it be just as wonderful? They say you never read the same book twice, that what mattered to you then won't matter to you now, and who you were the first time has long been replaced by someone new. So what about the mustangs? It could be that I'm searching and searching for this book that doesn't even exist anymore...at least, not in the way I think it does.
I re-read because it's safe, and comfortable, and I know what I'm getting. If the guy gets the girl the first time, he's going to get her each and every time. While I often like to explore literature and let new stories unfold around me, sometimes I just don't want to worry that I'm investing myself in a story that will end in a way I don't want it to, or that I'll be left unsatisfied, or that my favorite character will get a terrible case of small pox (I hate when that happens). But even when I consider my favorite novels, the ones I re-read the most often, I know the words so well and I know the characters as if they were old childhood friends and they're still different, each and every time.
You can print the a in indelible ink, but the response you have to it will always be unpredictable.
So what about these mustangs, huh? They could be just a fleeting memory of a summer night that passed from me a long time ago, or they could be lurking somewhere on the library shelf between their yellow-or-maybe-orange covers still as perfect as I'm almost definitely pretty sure they are. Was it This Half-Forgotten Novel that was so wonderful, or was it just my response to it that mattered to me? Can we ever really tell the difference?
Or, more importantly, should we try?
You know how, in nearly every family sitcom ever, there's always an episode where a kid idolizes some athlete/rock star/actor/et al, but when he finally meets him, the idol turns out to be a huge jerk? I always feel bad for the kid, and I always think that if it was me, I'd have rathered go on thinking he was great instead of knowing I had hung big posters of a jerk on my wall. It doesn't really change what that athlete/rock star/whatever meant to the kid, except now, he's tarnished in the kid's mind, and it'll never be the same. In that respect, maybe we shouldn't try to remove our personal responses from the equation when talking about books we love. It could be that they're only thin, hollow skeletons of ink without our feelings and reactions to hold it all together.
Because there are so many gaps in my memory of This Half-Forgotten Novel, and of Leeann-or-maybe-Kate, and of the breathtaking mountain descriptions, I worry that it wasn't actually all that good to begin with. For the same reasons, I worry that it is still that good, but I'll never be able to get back there with the mustangs. It's a damned-if-you-do kind of thing, I guess. Half the time I'm kicking myself for not writing down the author's name or the title or something searchable in Google, but sometimes, I think it's better this way.
I do know one thing, though--that kid in that family sitcom? He'd still have gone to meet his idol even if he knew there was a chance he'd be a jerk. And if there's ever another clear sunny day that I stumble over the curb outside the library, wandering the shelves looking for exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, and I happen to find This Half-Forgotten Novel, it won't matter if the cover is yellow or orange or fluorescent blue with rhinestones--no pack of mustangs, proverbial or otherwise, is going to stop me from checking it out.
As a perpetual re-reader, my inability to recall any concrete, searchable terms for this book infuriates me. Of the things I can remember about it, not a single one helps me or the librarian or the omnipotent Google to help me find it again. I know I read it in the summertime, because the air conditioner in my parents' house was turned up so high that I could hear it rattling in the window frame, and it made my fingertips cold. I know that I checked it out of a local library on a bright, sunny, clear-as-forever day and that I dropped my library card in the mud because I was watching kids play catch in the parking lot and stumbled over a curb on my way inside.
I know, too, that it was exactly the book I needed at exactly the moment that I read it, because that's an unmistakeable feeling that sticks with you, and maybe even lives on the pages long after you've returned it to the library, two days late, and infects the next person who takes it home and cracks open the yellow-or-possibly-orange cover.
I do not, however, know what the damn book was called.
Unfortunately, I have wandered the stacks of that same library countless times since, sometimes on equally bright, clear days, looking for this book I barely remember but cannot entirely forget. Unless that "unmistakable feeling" suddenly turns into a giant flashing strobe light with a neon sign saying, Here it is, you dummy, I don't know how I'll ever find it again. And I desperately want to read it. I think. I mean, it was a really awesome book the first time...maybe. I remember it was perfect at the time, so that means it's got to be good. Really good. Probably.
The story of This Half-Forgotten Novel comes back to me in still frames and frozen phrases. There was a horse ranch, a girl who'd just buried a family member, a rugged horse trainer who steals her heart. There were troubled teenagers and a gap-toothed farm hand and possibly a snowstorm. There was a pack of wild mustangs, running free in the Montana mountains, and the way the author described them took my breath away. I stayed up all night, sitting on the living room floor and making notes about the mustangs in a steno pad and falling so hard and fast for this story that I spent the whole next day physically in smoggy, stuffy New Jersey but mentally on a mountain in Montana. It was wonderful. And I so very badly want to experience that wonderful again.
But, I can't help but ask myself, what if I do find it? Will it be just as wonderful? They say you never read the same book twice, that what mattered to you then won't matter to you now, and who you were the first time has long been replaced by someone new. So what about the mustangs? It could be that I'm searching and searching for this book that doesn't even exist anymore...at least, not in the way I think it does.
I re-read because it's safe, and comfortable, and I know what I'm getting. If the guy gets the girl the first time, he's going to get her each and every time. While I often like to explore literature and let new stories unfold around me, sometimes I just don't want to worry that I'm investing myself in a story that will end in a way I don't want it to, or that I'll be left unsatisfied, or that my favorite character will get a terrible case of small pox (I hate when that happens). But even when I consider my favorite novels, the ones I re-read the most often, I know the words so well and I know the characters as if they were old childhood friends and they're still different, each and every time.
You can print the a in indelible ink, but the response you have to it will always be unpredictable.
So what about these mustangs, huh? They could be just a fleeting memory of a summer night that passed from me a long time ago, or they could be lurking somewhere on the library shelf between their yellow-or-maybe-orange covers still as perfect as I'm almost definitely pretty sure they are. Was it This Half-Forgotten Novel that was so wonderful, or was it just my response to it that mattered to me? Can we ever really tell the difference?
Or, more importantly, should we try?
You know how, in nearly every family sitcom ever, there's always an episode where a kid idolizes some athlete/rock star/actor/et al, but when he finally meets him, the idol turns out to be a huge jerk? I always feel bad for the kid, and I always think that if it was me, I'd have rathered go on thinking he was great instead of knowing I had hung big posters of a jerk on my wall. It doesn't really change what that athlete/rock star/whatever meant to the kid, except now, he's tarnished in the kid's mind, and it'll never be the same. In that respect, maybe we shouldn't try to remove our personal responses from the equation when talking about books we love. It could be that they're only thin, hollow skeletons of ink without our feelings and reactions to hold it all together.
Because there are so many gaps in my memory of This Half-Forgotten Novel, and of Leeann-or-maybe-Kate, and of the breathtaking mountain descriptions, I worry that it wasn't actually all that good to begin with. For the same reasons, I worry that it is still that good, but I'll never be able to get back there with the mustangs. It's a damned-if-you-do kind of thing, I guess. Half the time I'm kicking myself for not writing down the author's name or the title or something searchable in Google, but sometimes, I think it's better this way.
I do know one thing, though--that kid in that family sitcom? He'd still have gone to meet his idol even if he knew there was a chance he'd be a jerk. And if there's ever another clear sunny day that I stumble over the curb outside the library, wandering the shelves looking for exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, and I happen to find This Half-Forgotten Novel, it won't matter if the cover is yellow or orange or fluorescent blue with rhinestones--no pack of mustangs, proverbial or otherwise, is going to stop me from checking it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment