a country you have already failed to recognize

the present, the past, m. john harrison

An odd reading experience I’ve had a handful of times: reading a book I don’t know is a sequel. You cannot have such an experience on purpose and so I don’t know if I’ll ever have one again. (For this reason, I can’t even recommend doing it.) There was also a time in my life when I almost exclusively read books “cold,” which made this kind of experience, possibly, more likely. A glance at the “back material” would have revealed to me that the book in my hands was related to some other, prior book, which perhaps I ought to be reading first. However, since no such glancing was taking place, I would only find out when the book was over.

The first book that I ever read this peculiar way was Hugh Walpole’s The Secret City (1919), which I’ve never reread. Even when I was reading it and finding myself both mystified and moved, having what I knew even at the time was a life-altering reading experience, I was also going: is this, perhaps, a mediocre book? Perhaps, even, bad? Possibly it’s not; …