THE PLEASURE OF A KIND OF READING

 

My friend, Lynn (not in photo), recently gave me an old paperback called The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton.  I espied it in his house and expressed interest.  He gave it to me which means eBay betrayed no great covetousness for it.  I am thankful, nonetheless.  Like many of my favorite books, it is a great one for just picking up when I have a few minutes to kill.  The other day, I had a spare moment waiting to let in the woman who cleans the restaurant.  I keep such books in my car for those occasions. 

It occurred to me when I put it down that reading these varied essays is like reading a blog.  Then, I thought, no; reading a blog is like reading these essays.  It should properly be recognized which came first and begat the other.  There is really nothing new about blogging except the mode of transmission.  This observation is not a revelation, but I still think it is worth noting that there is a tendency with the new technology for its exponents to hail it as something new under the sun.  It isn’t, and we need to go back at least to Montaigne to properly place our gratitude.  Essay, of course, [Is any phrase more arrogant, than "of course"?] comes from the French word which means “to try” or “to attempt”.  Essays are attempts at explaining or ruminating on a subject.

I make this observation, hopefully, without making the egregiously risible connection between what you are ill-fatedly reading now and the essays of Montaigne or, more lately, Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, or Meghan Daum.  But, I think I do share with them the delight of working out something on paper in order to work it out in my head.  It seems axiomatic to me that the best way to figure out what I really think about a thing is to put out as much as I can on paper, read it, reread it, go away from it and reread it later, and then bring it to a final form.  It is delightful, but often hard.  That’s why some of my posts molder for a time in the “drafts” file of WordPress’ server. 

Too, it’s interesting to pursue this as a conversation with one or a few people you have in mind who may read your writing.  If you’re lucky enough to get feedback, the process I’ve described above is all the more enhanced by this voluntary editing of your ideas.