(10:03 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Meditations on a Dilbert Cartoon

There is an old Dilbert cartoon (ca. 1992) in which it goes through portraits of various kinds of people: "their cars are always spotlessly clean," "their checkbook is always balanced," etc. They are "people with too much time on their hands." My car is not always spotlessly clean, and online banking has made me terribly lax with regard to formally balancing my checkbook, but the most damning manifestation of "too much time on their hands" was one that I deliberately left off the list: "they read the same book more than once."

I have read the following books more than once:

• The Adventures of Robin Hood. This was an annual summer event for me for at least five years. I distinctly remember two separate versions: the one my grandfather gave me (in a way, it was the best gift I ever received), and the one at the Davison Public Library (whose holdings I had virtually committed to memory by the time I went to high school). The library's version was longer, with a lengthy excursus on the adventures of Little John, which I remember as being the best part of the book -- probably because of my tendency to prefer secondary characters in general (I was an avid reader of the occasional miniseries of comics starring Robin, of "Batman and"). I would read the book in trees, sitting on the top of the slide -- anything to be up off the ground, but a safe distance off the ground, which is curious, because I don't think Robin Hood necessarily lived in a tree.
  
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I first read this book in fourth grade, while I was grounded from TV for a couple months due to calling the playground lady a "butthead" after throwing a Frisbee at the head of Brian Granger (hitting him in the ear; during a brief time when I was required to sit right next to him in class, I once punched him in the ear, one of the few times I ever punched anyone -- I don't recall getting in trouble for, you know, punching a classmate in the ear, in a school where a playground fight was a major event, probably because the teacher simply didn't believe I was capable of such a thing). My heart was strangely warmed by the thought of wandering around in a cave with a pretty girl, though it seemed that having a maniacal Indian chasing me around would be annoying. I read it a second time simply because I owned a copy of the book and wanted to read a book, and I knew it was a good one. I also wanted to review for...
  
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I swear, I did occasionally read books that didn't start with "The Adventures of"). From fourth grade through about sixth grade, before I discovered "sword and sorcery" novels, I was a Mark Twain completist. I read Tom Sawyer Abroad, a rather bizarre tale of Tom and Huck's trip across the country in a hot-air balloon, during which Huck exclaimed that maps were "liars" because the color of the ground in certain states didn't correspond to the color on the map (a motif later taken up by a series of Calvin and Hobbes comics -- to save space, I'll declare right now that I have read every Calvin and Hobbes strip ever produced, at least ten times, at least); Puddin' Head Wilson, which seems to have consisted of two half-digested stories in one; and a variety of other writings that were easily accessible in the library. I distinctly remember thinking that Huckleberry Finn was his least accomplished work. I had to read it again for sophomore English, and I did a hasty job of it. One could rightly say that I have not-read Huckleberry Finn multiple times.
  
• The Bible. I had a startling, though half-unconscious, insight while growing up: the most annoying thing I could do would be to Actually Read the Bible. I read the whole thing through, in undisciplined segments, multiple times, focusing in on the most gruesome or puzzling incidents (my favorite is the story of Ehud in Judges 3). Nothing sets church people on edge quite as much as someone who knows the Bible, especially someone who has been trained to read the Bible through the careful study of books whose titles begin with "The Adventures of...." More than one biblical scholar has noted that fantasy novels are the best modern analogue to the scriptures. I never read them more than once (although arguably I read the same David Eddings series twice, though he switched around the names the second time -- still, David Eddings is the man; I think we can agree on that). I had a tendency to prefer the Old Testament over the new, which the sheer tedium of Bible quizzing only confirmed and strengthened. One might say that I have not-read Matthew, Luke, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, James, Hebrews, and 1 and 2 Peter many, many times.
  
• Fear and Trembling. I read this my freshman year of college, having had virtually no instruction in philosophy, and I found it utterly incomprehensible. I then read it a couple years later after having read a lot of Plato (Protagoras is my favorite dialogue -- put it on the list), and still found it incomprehensible. I read it for an informal "reading group," precursor to the university without condition, and started to find it comprehensible. I read it a fourth time, for class, and I understood most of it. I'm sure that on the fifth time through, I'll finally comprehend the part about the merman. I also read Repetition about three times and Philosophical Fragments twice -- they weren't nearly as hard for me.
  
• The Waste Land, Four Quartets, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- while we're on the topic of poetry, let us also mention the first book of The Faerie Queene, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and Othello.
  
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This was an important book for my development as a person. My senior year in high school, I was determined to read that book no matter what the odds. The title alone was what grabbed me -- I didn't even know about Joyce's canonical status at that point. Since I was going through a conversion to Catholicism at the time, it was especially bizarre to me. We might also add the first hundred pages of Ulysses to my multiple reads list -- I've started that one so many times that I can probably recite certain passages from memory, but once Leopold Bloom enters the scene, I've lost interest.
  
• Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. I make fun of Vonnegut-o-philes, because I am one.
  
• The Crying of Lot 49. I remain convinced that Thomas Pynchon is the most important theologian of the 20th century.
  
• Invisible Man. In my naivete, the first time through I wanted to run to my professor and say, "Things like that boxing match -- they didn't actually happen, right? He just made it up -- it couldn't have been that bad, could it?" Say, not ask.
  
• Oedipus Rex and Antigone -- but since they were high school reads, I can't remember the details. I hate how bad a reader I was then.
  
• The Ticklish Subject and The Fragile Absolute -- Yes, you read that correctly -- I am on my way to being a scholar of Slavoj Zizek, the trend-sucking dilettante himself.
  
• Seminar XX: Encore -- Lacan is much better the second time through. I didn't read the knot-tying section on my second pass, so maybe this doesn't count.
  (This list is turning out to be longer than I expected.)
  
• Catch-22, White Noise, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
  
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, In Memoriam. Have I ever mentioned the paper I wrote on The Crying of Lot 49 and In Memoriam, in light of my half-digested understanding of Zizek's Lacanian ethics? It was one of those times when I chose a paper topic by using the "Oh, fuck it" test.
  
• The Trial. Kafka almost ranks up there with Twain in terms of obsession -- he was truly the love of my high school life. Has he influenced my thinking at all? Perhaps unconsciously. Or perhaps I now shun him because "Kafka's for high schoolers."
  
• Notes from Underground. This has been like the return of the repressed for me -- every few years it resurfaces. I'm about due for another helping of Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment might also count on this list, though the first time was an over-ambitious junior high attempt, wherein I didn't "understand" -- but as Lacan says, and I paraphrase, "Read first, then understand."

I'm sure there are others. I initially thought the list was going to end shortly after Huckleberry Finn, but it turns out that I've been leading a fairly monastic life since age ten. I keep thinking that maybe I theoretically need to take a year off after getting my masters at CTS, but then I think, "No, if at all possible, what I need to do is read books and occasionally talk to people about them." Outside of that, all other choices and options blend together in a sea of indifference -- marriage or singleness, lay or clergy, business or charity, Coke or Pepsi. I worry vaguely about incurring debts and becoming "tied down," but that's precisely because such things could become obstacles to reading books and occasionally talking to people about them.

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