Re-reading as re-membering

How many stars does it take to make a constellation? How many books fit in a milk crate?

Franz Kobell, Traveler in a Mountainous Landscape at Sunset, 1800

The following is a guest essay by Callahan Woodbery, Perelandra’s Reader in Residence for November/December of 2023. Essentialism, reflexivity, impermanence—all fit in the following metaphysical milk crate.

That Callahan took up the source of the bookshop’s namesake, C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, during her tenure is cause for some celebration, but even more significant is that she did so in order to re-encounter and necessarily reappraise its virtues. This, to my mind, is how the agentive reader keeps meaning free and morality possible, ensuring that values never harden into the chain links of dogma. — Joe

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Throughout my second decade, I felt that the solution to all my problems could be solved by putting whatever I owned into my car, leaving town, and starting over. This kind of habitual shaking of the Etch-a-Sketch fostered a deep love of essentialism—what parts are non-negotiable? What pieces make the cut every time we go back to bare bones? What are the bones themselves?

I made a deal with myself in that time of traveling light that I could keep whatever books would fit into the turquoise milk crate that served as my bedside table. It became a sort of portable altar to the written word. But moreover it represented one square foot of my soul held outside my body.

The first time this system was employed, the names that fit in the crate included Anaïs Nin, E. M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Frank O’Hara and Wallace Stevens—writers who gave me words to shape a malleable self. These compilations of glue and paper were the tools I would use to rebuild myself wherever I might land.

The names and editions would evolve and shift as I did, but the milk crate system stayed in place over many years and many moves. In every space, whether I was there for three months or three years, the books would be set out where I could see them, a chance to reestablish myself in a glance. The dog-eared pages stayed comfortingly within arms reach any time I felt my feet start to slip; a moment with Bathsheba Everdeen or Douglas Spaulding and clarity would come.

The longer I stayed in one place, the more books would accumulate (they have a tendency to do that). Every new book we read is a finger held up to the wind, testing a new perspective. And then when it was time to go again, I would cull through and a new constellation would be slipped into the plastic bin. As the landscape of self changes, the map must be updated and navigational systems recalibrated. I wish I’d better documented the kaleidoscope of titles over the years, but there were, and are, guidestars within the manifold that never faltered. 

It’s now been nearly four years since I’ve had all my books out in one place. They no longer fit in a milk crate, but occupy a corner of a storage unit, patiently waiting to be unpacked and arranged on my someday shelves alphabetically or by subject. It is easy for me to be seduced by the implied moral superiority of minimalism—that having less stuff somehow makes you a better person. While I do agree that eventually we become beholden to our belongings, I now make an exception for books. They are the easiest things to excuse and invite into a monastic space, and the hardest things to part with when there is simply no more room.

Physical books are touchstones and talismans for memory and place, little packets of context. The words on the pages may not be as important as the white flame of the inscription with the year it was offered as a gift in the handwriting of the person who thought of you when they saw it in the shop. Or the tree under which you were sitting when you first heard the author’s voice in your head, or what you saw through tear-blurred eyes when you looked up from the last line. When you pick up a familiar book, the texture, smell, sound of the crackling page serve as multisensory radar pings that triangulate the wandering self and bring it wholly into view. 

From time to time it is the words themselves that are important. I spent much of 2020 revisiting the foundational stories that I credit with shaping my worldview and personality as a way of tending to my inner child. This manifested as re-reading some truly cringe-inducing young adult fantasy novels that I recalled as being transformative to my 10-year-old self.

I was delighted, if not on the whole surprised, to find that many of the characters were still worthy of my regard decades later. Turns out, I’ve always been drawn to stories about headstrong, creative, magical young women who are uncomfortable with the status quo of feminine expression and angry at the cruelty of the patriarchy.

In the past months of my reader-residency at Wolverine Farm, I’ve been revisiting the landscapes of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy (yes, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe guy experimented with sci-fi). My father read these books aloud to me when I was in elementary school, and I hear his voice in my head as I return to Malacandra and Perelandra. Through this practice I’ve found that it is just as important to witness an eroded landscape as to revisit the unchanging firmament. The words on the page haven’t changed since they were published, but the eyes encountering them certainly have evolved.

There was a bitter slash of disappointment to discover that a cherished memory is interwoven with anti-feminist ideology, and a bark of laughter at the pre-script insisting that the following story is not to be taken as allegorical. But I love canyons too much to expect that beauty will be exactly where I found it the last time. Revisiting stories is vital whether because of or in spite of the discord you may find.

With a little self-reflection or a few sessions of therapy one could probably arrive at the same conclusion—that we are hermit crabs collecting parts of characters to build the image of self we walk around with and present to the world at large. But there is something electric about being able to reach out and touch those parts, to pick them up and re-assemble a Megazord of self.

Reading, or more specifically re-reading, physical books offers us a chance to re-member ourselves, to re-construct, re-orient, and re-center around the core tenets of our being. You could do a thought-experiment and get similar effects from just thinking about these stories and those early memories, but there is something significant about holding the original book that struck you to your soul. Or revisiting the mass-market paperback version you checked out from a rural middle school library. Or in placing your fingerprints over a loved one’s on the edition shelved in your childhood living room before you put it in a milk crate and declared it your own.