Teaching The Oldman and the Sea, the Hemingway classic, I am again left at a loss for thoughts. Re-reading a classic is an exciting venture as it affords discoveries of a completely unintended kind. A remet Hamlet or reseen portrait of 'My Last Duchess' has manifold minds to launch. Truer will be a remagined Blakian Tiger or a Coleridgean Xanadu. The trip beside the Oldman through the Hemingwayesque imagination waylays the process of common reading. Rereading the Oldman, my reading was at sea.
Is not reading a kind of fishing ? But what makes us really old? Are we not old too? Is not a seasoned reader an old man? Old enough to go after a bait big enough to worry once hooked? Hasn't Faulkner spoken 'magnificent failures' which are his masterpieces? How about the magnificent failure of the Oldman called his Marlin ? The sense of effort which is gargantuan and the final take home after the three day long task which is a David like remnant of what once was a Goliath?
An act of reading is an act of fishing. A reader starts off with a hope. Hope to get hold of a thought which will take us along. A reader takes sail in to the unknown currents of waters with an imagined catch but unimagined in nature, size and shape. If fishing is beloved to bring in fishes for sure, then reading is thought to bring in exhilaration of the mental kind and sublimity of a spiritual sort. Every time one dips between the covers of a new ocean, the depth is beyond us and the Catch marlin is only hoped for. What makes one an old reader often is the fact we have gone fishless longer thn 84days since getting hold of a marlinesque idea is occasionally more arduous than the one the Oldman catches.
A couple of bad reads should not put a genuine reader off since the act of reading is the religious faith of angling for the faraway heaven, the imagination's hook. The setting one chooses, like the Calvinoesque preparations to steady our reading, is not unlike readiness for the fishing trip. If on a summer's night a reader reclines to his chair, with the cell either beside or switched off, with remote near or faraway, taking one long look at the covers pondering on the designs and wondering what is in store within the depth of the sea within the bottomless covers, the reader takes to the waters of the act. The info on the back flap, the picture of the author, the shards of the cloud, the nature of the wind, the sardine in the can, the water jug near, bookmark, a possible pillow to switch angles if needed, the mast, the lines - well the fisher-reader is on the way. One may not be aware of the millions of brethren around the world who set sail simultaneously from all the bed-drawing rooms, harbouring invisible catches. All set sail thus, but unable to fathom the depths to which they may be pushed. The size of the text is no indicator of the depths to which one may be pulled. The bait settles the destiny here too. But, it is not the size of the catch which matters , but the size of he imagination in a way.
A reader should navigate clear of the early temptations too. A desire for an easy catch and easier gratification of the senses are not meant for the sensible reader. Sail beyond that Devils Creek and move the depths. The flying fishes will greet you early on. The verbal dazzle and the twisted perspectives, the charming metaphors and the warbling slants of language. These are but the appetisers for the uninitiated. Necessary yet not the goals by themselves. The pleasure dome of Xanadu which Coleridge decrees at the outset of Kubla Khan can't enable the fisherman in to the horticultural conclusion of the pulsating romantic metaphor. The damsel with the dulcimer is still waiting in wings to deprive us our of our hasty catches.
When the bait is out in the watery imagination, when one sails through the drift of the text, when one drifts through sails of the drift, the pondereor exclaims as to the drift and direction of the read. The big marlin is an imperceptible breed. The multi-lines which the reader has left adrift , which the read has conjured out of the reader, are afloat in various directions. The lines which are taken and demonstrate the tension are many. The pull of ideas from various quarters, in Blakean fashion, the God-the tiger line, the God-the artist line, the line of the fearful yet unvisioned line of symmetry , the line of the night forest begin to rock the boat of the reader. It is only when this multidimensional pull actualises that the fishing has commenced in right earnest.
The realisation of the catch, the nagging feel that some thing is on its way, the tip of the nose and the paws of the thought fox, the phantom of the smoke screens , this is only the tip of the fishberg. The loneliness of the long long distance fishing creates phantoms ou of nowhere too. The feel of a pull may be deceptive just as the feel of the real may be missed too. The mind which flirts with the buffet of thoughts on offer, the line and sink which are not fully taken by the mind, the story is common. The reader keeps himself guessing and releases extra yards of line to the air. The reels of ideas are spread wide. The mind which is caught unawares by that imperceptible drag of a different kind of a push. Suddenly you know that you have become one with 'the prince of the apple towns'. The mind is now on its way. The marlin is sure in. Even though clarity of the contours is a point of indecision.
The heave is what one waits for next. The huge heave which will bring the stuck idea to the fore and make one sure where one is heading. For sure, the marlin will lead. Ahab. Aha!
The struggle is now enjoyably real. As Hemingway puts it, the equation is pretty even and it's hard to define the contours of the feel. This push pull of the reader and the text, the battle for control is never won. When the tail of the dead catch is the standard of accomplishment worth a couple of days, the loss-loss formula is savoured. Is not loss-loss win-win too? The heaves and counter heaves of the reader and the read is where the pleasure peaks. To be or not to be. Till when the final orders are given and all the smiles come to a close. Even that moment when all the smiles come to a close is the loss -loss which turns win- win. Does the reader smile at the closure of the Browningesque smiles?
The best part of reading is when a perceptive reader deliriously battles it out with the catch. Waterless, food denied, sleep kept at bay, with gutted tasteless dolphin as support, the wait and watch proceeds. The weariness of the long wait doesn't yield an easy victory of the text. Nor does the text reach the shore intact. The mind preys on it to. The cities remain invisible when one conqueror and one explorer keep debating. The marlin which is great and marvellous make the Oldman take all the tricks ibis bag out while the old man lets patience be the better guide.
If reading is an arduous task what can one make of the post reading experience ? With your mind heavy with the catch, the heave of an idea inside, the tiredness closes you in. But the catch inside wont budge. It is in but not really digested. The heaviness of the old reader heading towards the nowhere with the burden of the read is familiar. What begins with a recline of the stretched body, putting the book back, stretching the hands out, closed eyes, and the gaze of post-reading amaze is an appetising hangover.
The yearning to place the feel of the reading, the still unfathomed by lanes of the texts, the unhinged doors of ones mind, the tricky struggle to get one's happily and willingly suspended moorings back- these people the trip of the reader back to the quotidian. Haven't the old reader fought the waves of (dis)orientation on the sail back to the land of ordinariness? Irrespective of the innumerable ways in which the reader has been atomically altered, does the monster of commonly lived experience allow one to take the big read home safe. Is a reader ever back home dry? The whaled catch of the marlins inside us , the read and rendered effective feel of the narratives, aren't they sparked off by the here and the now elements? Woken back to the conveyor belt of the everyday laity, reality, don't the readers feel the pinch ? Recovered from the effect of the read, how much of the read experience do we let hold? The tail which amazes the onlookers?
The reads which are meant to be chewed and digested, are they not often digested so perfect into the system that not much except the tail shows? Still, let us dream of lions on the sandy shores of psyche. Lets walk into the next narrative. And sail deeper than plummet can sound. And garner the sound and the fury of the unbearable lightness of fishing.
Be the salao. Magnificent failures.
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