Read, Memory

March 28, 2025 1:49 AM

For years, William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience has sat on my bookshelf reproaching me for my laziness and ignorance. It was one of a handful of “great books” in my modest library that I hadn’t yet got around to reading. Few people dispute the notion that Varieties is a hugely significant book, by one of America’s greatest thinkers, on a vitally important subject. No more excuses, then. The time had come to enlighten myself. So, a few weeks ago, I pulled out my copy, blew off the dust, opened it, and was met with the horrifying sight of my own handwriting. At the end of each chapter, I had scribbled detailed, hideously pedantic notes summarizing James’s arguments. In fact, I had read The Varieties of Religious Experience. And hadn’t remembered a word of it. from The Patron Saint of Forgetting [The Hedgehog Review]
posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

That was forgettable.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 3:56 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]

...The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the YES function in man. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience

Varieties of Religious Experience
William James




posted by y2karl at 3:59 AM on March 28 [7 favorites]

tl;dr: unseen — reality of [archive]
posted by HearHere at 4:05 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]

Do you know what a relief it is to hear about someone else forgetting what they read? This has always been a challenge to my idea of myself as a reader, as a basically literate person who likes books. I can't remember anything. And the things I do remember, are entirely unhelpful. When he talks about finding his handwritten notes in books, I flash on a memory of fetishizing a certain literature professor's spiky handwriting in the margins of his books, and how I, the besotted student, wanted to emulate this and so began writing in the margins, including the margins of library books, and I'm trying to remember the particular book, which was definitely orange, or possibly blue, and had to do with literature, but what was it? (I remember the little tin of candies and vitamin C's he carried around to deal with his smoker's cough, more than I remember the books!) Of course that was thirty years ago. It's more surprising to encounter discussions of books I've read recently--to say to myself, aha, time to join in, I just read this--but to remember only the vaguest outlines, no names, no faces, not even important plot moments, just a general sense of the book, or not even that, a general sense of how I think I ought to have felt while reading it, a sort of hollowed-out book-report sense, a soulless amazon review.

I was about to say how much I cherish the few things I do remember, for instance, the way I can instantly flip through Discipline and Punish to get to the diagrams of the Panopticon, so I just picked up my copy...and flipped...and flipped...and felt a sense of growing terror because the diagram wasn't where I remembered--and then a shock of disappointment, not recognizing Bentham's diagram at all, realizing I'd gotten it mixed up with the picture on the next page, memory sort of smearing together a confabulated schematic.

Well, at least it's not just me. There's that, I guess.
posted by mittens at 4:12 AM on March 28 [17 favorites]

True story - a colleague has 2 copies of "Improving your memory for dummies", because he forgot he had already bought one and got a second.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 4:30 AM on March 28 [12 favorites]

A couple days after 9/11, I needed to escape and locked myself in my room and read the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy in one go, over a solid day and a half. About five years later I decided to read it again - and there were entire sections I just plain did not remember from the first time around. And I'm not talking a line or a paragraph here and there, I'm talking entire chapters or plot events. Like - the whole Tom Bombadil section? Totally new to me.

At first I was alarmed - how could I have forgotten that much - but then I noticed that the majority of the bits I didn't remember were towards the beginning. I chalked it up to my mental state at the time I'd picked it up - I was probably so freaked out that it was a wonder I was able to retain anything at all.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:30 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]

I'm almost at the age where I can give away all my books but one. Then every couple of weeks I'll pick it up, say to myself "Hey, this looks like a good one," and read it.
posted by mono blanco at 4:50 AM on March 28 [5 favorites]

I read it as a younger person, I don't remember a word. Mrs A is currently reading it and repeats some of the more trenchant bon mots, none of which ring any bells.

For years I swore that I never wore blue jeans in high school. Picture evidence proved me wrong.

I find the latter example more - unsettling than the former. (Why was it important enough for me to quash from my memory, and remembering the quashing itself?)

As to the book, lost memory may be because James' subject matter didn't interest me much even at the time I read it (and no, it was not for a class. As a younger person I like the author felt more compelled to read Important Works in which I had no particular interest. Now I insist on both criteria, genuine interest and genuine relevance.)
posted by BWA at 6:00 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]

Empress, to be fair, the LotR trilogy is a lot of book. I'd be surprised if you would remember it all in one reading.

I *never* remember a book completely in the first go, but if it's engaging enough I'll go back and read it again and then again until it clings like a barnacle. I don't drink, but I have other things affecting my memory, and last night my housemate came in, said hello, I replied and then prompltly forgot the entire interaction, only to go downstairs a couple of hours later wondering where he was.

Memory is weird and losing it is something that has terrified me all my life.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 7:26 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]

I don't think a person can be expected to remember very much book after only one reading. You have to read more than once and it with some focus if you want to retain it.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:07 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]

We had a really neat conversation here at MetaFilter some time in the past year about people who are "rememberers" and people who are "forgetters." It was really eye-opening for me. In my life, I' a rememberer. When it comes to books I've read, I'm a forgetter, usually only retaining a sense of whether I liked it or not. I can generally call up more details if I look at a description of the book. I think this split in my brain is an interesting one.

I re-read books a lot, both because I like re-reading books I enjoyed, and because it's how a book really gets into my brain. I often like books more the second time; I follow them better, see how the pieces fit together, and am generally free from any anxiety about what's going to happen, like who is going to live or die, etc.

A book I love is How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, which is both truly thoughtful and hilarious. He categorizes "books you have forgotten" among the "books you haven't read." It's worth a read.
posted by Well I never at 8:35 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]

Concept in psychology:external cognition. My old books with their scribbled notes make me a cyborg. Forgotten ways of thinking are there in the margins, waiting to spring back into being with a quick skim. I can not just remember what the book says but rebecome who I was.

Even stranger, downloading a past self can produce a strange double image, feeling the feeling of who I was as being in conflict with who I am.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:14 AM on March 28 [7 favorites]

For a long time, I used to go to bed early. That said, for a long time, I also gave up reading nonfiction because I just couldn't remember the contents of, for example, histories I read. And not even big, deep-dive histories.

I've read A People's History of Britain by Rebecca Fraser all the way through, twice. It's a monarch-by-monarch history that hits all the high points for each one. Can I remember a single detail about most of the monarchs covered? No, not beyond what I have in deep memory, acquired long ago, about Henry VIII or James I or Elizabeth I. It's discouraging af, frankly, and I don't know that getting older is going to help. I suspect it will not.
posted by the sobsister at 10:31 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]

Interesting article that seems relevant to my own ability to remember and forget things. I’m remarkably good at forgetting and passably decent at remembering.

Coincidentally, I posted a book on FanFare last night and in my write up about it I mentioned that I remember so little about the le Carré novels that I’ve read that I essentially haven’t read them.

For some reason this prompted me to review some of my posts and comments here on MetaFilter and it will come as no surprise that I didn’t recognize some of them as being mine, which they obviously were since my name was attached. Memory sure is fickle.

Empress, you read all three LotR in a day and a half. Like, how? That’s an impressive accomplishment and frankly, these are some dense books and there’s no reason why you should remember anything but the big moments. Wow!

Chavenet, day after day you’ve been doing some great fpp’s and I’m sure that I’m not alone in appreciating them. Your posts are like cozy chats in a private library with a toasty fire, comfy chairs and where all are welcome.
posted by ashbury at 11:08 AM on March 28 [5 favorites]

Clearly, I hadn’t read the entire essay linked before I mentioned How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, which the author also discusses. I really enjoyed this essay, especially because I am also a re-reader. It is very often true that I like a book better the second time, and it’s nearly always true that I understand it better. I find rereading tremendously satisfying for these reasons, although, for some books, it’s also just that I took a lot of pleasure in the book and I am enjoying taking that pleasure again.
posted by Well I never at 6:15 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

Years ago, I was in a tight financial spot. Winter was coming. I wanted a pea coat, a short one, in a light color. And it made me sad because I couldn't afford a good one at the time.

A few days after I had given up on the idea of buying said coat, I wandered into the room I used for extra clothes racks. I idly sorted through the clothes hanging on one rack, and spied an unfamiliar cream-colored mass in a light plastic sheath. "What is THIS?" I wondered. I took it off the rack and gasped. It was, in fact, a brand-new cream-colored pea coat, and a nice one.

To this day I don't remember buying it. But there it was. I wore it many times until I left the US Northeast and no longer needed it. I gave it to the local goodwill and I hope it found a good home.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 6:21 AM on March 30 [3 favorites]