Re-reading is ok, even if it takes you years
because time is always on your side
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Reading is like herding sheep.
We want to round them up as soon as possible without letting anything escape on our first try. And somehow, the thought of re-reading something scares us so much that we double down on our pride and muscle through things we don’t understand, only to find ourselves burnt out and disgusted with everything.
None of us wants to feel stupid and admit failure, but sometimes putting a book aside for the time being isn’t a failure. It’s just called asking for help. Fortunately, help in our case doesn’t involve spending a few thousand bucks on a Border Collie named Chuck because, contrary to popular belief with reading, time is definitely on our side.
Here’s the thing: re-reading is totally ok, even if it takes you years. One of my first loves in philosophy was Jacques Derrida. Insofar as we’re going to keep this article PG-rated, his writing reads like scented sandpaper grinding against your noggin. And as a masochist, my first instinct was to double down. So, I slogged through Writing and Difference, Archive Fever and when I took a holiday to Paris, bought De La Grammatologie because by God I’ll conquer this pipe-smoking snob even if it breaks me.
Four years flew by, and I still didn’t have a single clue about what Derrida was writing. I threw in the towel, left my first love and started having affairs with whatever captured my attention. It sent me to a dinner party with Irish Literature, a formal dance with Flaubert and a confused, awkward date with Walter Benjamin.
Then, after about a year of bouncing around, during a random evening, I spotted my old copy of Writing and Difference and decided to give it a skim. But this time, the essay ‘Signs, Structure and Play’ sucked me straight in and revealed Derrida’s ideas in a clarity I wasn’t able to access before. I finished the essay in one sitting and slowly returned to an abandoned project of making sense of Derrida.
Though it might’ve looked like I’ve wasted 4 years, in reality, no time is wasted when you pour your heart into an author. Reading is a beautiful practice because the words you’ve once loved will stay with you, and they’ll change every time you re-read them. The Derrida I read when I was 19 was not the Derrida I now adore. And those years spent agonising over difficult pages were subtly preparing me for an eventual moment of clarity.
Who knows, maybe in another year I’ll realise all my understanding now is wrong, but that’s the beauty of lifelong learning: no one ever rounds up all the sheep in one go. And when in doubt, time is always on your side because in a few years, you’ll be reading a different book as a different person. Yet the original love for ideas and stories will stay as an absolute constant.
Stay curious.
Until next week
Robin