For Vivian Gornick, the power of re-reading is to discover new meanings and get to know better both the thoughts contained in the book and one’s past self. A critical line from “Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader” is when Gornick writes, “Why did you underline this? I asked myself, what’s so interesting here?” (Gornick, 2020, p. 2). In other words, Gornick is saying that he did not understand why the highlighted places in the text seemed essential to him in the past (Gornick, 2020).
To me, this suggests that for Gornick, the power of re-reading lies in getting to know herself. This is because, in the process of gaining new life experiences, people begin to look at certain things differently, including the meanings embedded in the text. To explain further, at various life stages, different things seem vital and relevant. This means that, depending on what is happening in the reader’s life, certain moments in the text may hold particular significance for them. Most importantly, rereading the moments marked as necessary allows one to get to know oneself better from the past, what worried and touched oneself before.
Another power of re-reading for Gornick is the discovery of new meanings. The author demonstrates this when she states, “I put the pages back together in their proper order and sat down to read the book anew, this time underlining and circling in a pen of another color the sentences and passages that now struck me as worth noting” (Gornick, 2020, p. 3).
In my understanding, this means that the author saw a new meaning in the text that she had not noticed before (Gornick, 2020). To clarify, through the prism of a new life experience, a person comes to understand things that they did not previously give importance to. Furthermore, one learns about things they previously did not value through the lens of a new life experience. Most importantly, rereading allows one to uncover previously hidden meanings. In short, rereading a book after passing through another critical life stage always allows new insights.
Reference
Gornick, V. (2020). Unfinished business: Notes of a chronic re-reader. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.