Reese Okyong Kwon

If, per Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature, one cannot read a book, one can only reread, then I’ve been dwelling lately in the realm of the possible. Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, Philip Larkin’s poetry, Philip Larkin’s letters, a couple of short stories (Michael Cunningham’s “Mister Brother,” Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”), and Norman Rush’s Mating (beloved Rush!): time is cruel and nothing stays the same, it’s true, but I can open The End of the Affair any time I like and there is Maurice Bendrix again, as I last left him, about to tell me once more about his hatred and his love. In art I can easily do what is almost impossible in life: in some sense to relive what I loved.

Lengthier and more eloquent thoughts on rereading from Wythe Marschall can be found on Electric Literature’s new blog, The Outlet.

And if only for the physical pleasure of typing the words, here is a passage from Greene in which Bendrix finds himself at odds with a priest over how to conduct a funeral:

“‘The Church offers privileges, Mr. Miles, as well  as responsibilities. There are special Masses for our dead. Prayers are regularly said. We remember our dead,’ he added, and I thought angrily, how do you remember them? Your theories are all right. You preach the importance of the individual. Our hairs are all numbered, you say, but I can feel her hair on the back of my hand: I can remember the fine dust of hair at the base of her spine as she lay face down on my bed. We remember our dead too, in our way.”