I was talking to a friend about comedic / farcical literature the other day, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller came up. That made me remember - I first read this book when I was about 15 years old. Or rather I read about 80% of it, didn’t quite finish it that time. I forced myself through it because I had heard it was subversive and intelligent and challenging, and I got nothing out of it. I didn’t see the humor, I didn’t get any political commentary, it was just a series of absurd things happening to absurd characters with no rhyme or reason.
I reread that book two years ago and damn near pissed myself laughing on every other page, but then the ending rolled around and it hit so hard. That sudden switch from absurdist comedy to heavy, bleak, depressing, and then he gives you just this glimmer of hope at the end anyway. I found it absolutely brilliant, and yet I kept thinking back to how none of this connected with me when I first read it.
Do you have books like that? Books that just plain went over your head, that you didn’t have the maturity to appreciate, that were too difficult in style or subject matter, and that you’ve come to appreciate years later?
Thomas Hardy novels like The Mayor of Casterbridge. My teen self being forced to read it in highschool absolutely rebelled against the way it was written and the subject matter itself. Fastforward 30 years and I adore his novels because I’m a subsistence farmer eking out a simple living and value nothing more than the love of my wife. Together we have realized the old-fashioned good life portrayed in his novels, the beautiful simplicity of how things used to be, and found books like the aforementioned, plus Return of the Native and Far From the Madding Crowd, and Tess to be extremely engaging food for thought.