How many times should one read a novel? This is a question that has been in my mind for a long time. With the amount of time at my disposal, after professional and personal work has been fulfilled and the large number of books which ought to be read, it is indeed very difficult to go through a novel more than once. But there are personal favorites like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ ‘Brothers Karamazov’ ‘‘100 Years of Solitude’ ‘The Three Musketeers’ ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ which I have read more than twice. Yet one has to have an awareness that a novel has to be read at different levels. Many of the novels that I read in my early days of reading fiction, I read them for the story or the plot, although there was a subtle hunch that this was some form of writing which was to be read not just for the “story” but something more than that. But there was no realization of what that element of fiction was. One such book which I read very early and haven’t reread ever since is ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Dostoyevsky. ‘Anna Karenina ‘and ‘The Idiot’ also belong to the same category. Classic novels like ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ or ‘David Copperfield’ can be read another time for the pure joy that the story brings to the reader. But that is not what I mean when I say one has to reread certain novels multiple times. For example a novel like Kafka’s ‘The Trial or Metamorphosis’ or Thomas Mann’s ‘Magic Mountain’ or Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ or Günter Grass’s ‘Tin Drum’ and Robert Graves’s ‘I Claudius’ have to be read (for a reader like me) again to get into what the fiction is all about. So, my first reading is going to appropriate the story, plot, characterization and tone to give me a sense of the novel, but to get at the resonance and dissonance in the novel I have to definitely make a more deeper and engaging study. Writers weave their stories from an elaborate synthesis of ideas and thoughts. A story of the road like Henry Fielding’s ‘ Tom Jones’ or ‘Joseph Andrews’ is totally different from an intriguing, atmospheric tale like Emily Bronte’s ‘ Wuthering Heights.’ which certainly demands more readings to comprehend the power and force of the novel. Two novels of Orhan Pamuk that I read ‘My name is Red’ and ‘The Black book’ have certainly confirmed my resolution that there are certain novels which ought to be read again and again. It is not that such novels don’t give enjoyment to the reader when they are read the first time.
For me the novel ‘My name is Red’ was a racy thriller but I had a feeling that there was something more about the novel and I would be doing gross injustice if I restricted my reading to that aspect, as the novel raises profound philosophical questions about the nature of art and creation.
How do we describe a book where art and reality seem to seamlessly merge into one another? As I read the novel I was under a spell. I was carried away by the force of the story and the plot as well as the power of the storyteller’s point of view, but could I miss the novelist’s playfulness, his comic seriousness and his mockery of the storyteller’s tale. The novel revels in pitching up a high ground of philosophical debate; one that has gone on for centuries and is yet to be resolved: the primacy of life over art: the power of the artist over God. Is the artist indebted to Allah for it is his creation which gives him the inspiration? Is the permanence of art greater than the impermanence of life or is this permanence itself a curse, destined never to cross the realm of inertia and breathe the madness and headiness called life for which reason life, the gift given by God is far greater and no painter, artist, engraver, miniaturist or calligrapher should ever come to believe or admire his work or any work of art as more lifelike than life itself.
The tale might sound simple; a murder mystery and a love story crossing paths in a philosophical abstraction, but Pamuk’s way of storytelling grips the novel and binds it with that extra element of mystique and suspense.
‘The East and the West belong to God ‘
There is an admirable passage on love. When passion wanes love is no more. Or is there no such thing called love, only different shades of it, the love of a passionate lover, the love of a couple after their lust is satiated, the love of compassion and mercy. Above all, the love of God or the love of Nature which is all encompassing.
Do we have the power to represent so much love? Does the artist paint from memory or does he paint by looking at reality? Is seeing more powerful than blindness? If one does look at reality, is it that reality which is transformed by the artist’s vision of reality (the medium of the artist ) the thinking process, his /her philosophical setting, milieu: then what is it that is represented: reality, or the artist’s vision of reality. Painters used to go blind to have a vision of how God destined the world to be. Does this blindness bestow the ultimate vision, the vision of eternity, the vision of Paradise?
When such questions are involved, I would certainly want to read the novel another time. My first reading of ‘100 Years of Solitude’ left me completely spellbound and baffled.(To be continued)