Ideal Age Thresholds for Reading Certain Books

[Teasing the Korean]

I was recently talking to a friend about Richard Brautigan, most famous for Trout Fishing in America.  Without really thinking about what I was saying, I said,  "He's the kind of writer you need to explore when you're in your 20s."  I loved his books, but I can't imagine reading one now.  I feel much the same about Tom Robbins. I thought Still Life with Woodpecker was brilliant when I read it age 23 or so, but again, his stuff would not interest me now.    

Am I off-base here?  I think on the one hand, there is something healthy about our perspectives changing as we go through life.  On the other hand, I worry that my brain is becoming calcified for believing that windows for reading certain books will close at key thresholds.  

[Rabshakeh]

There are surely some that are best read at certain times.

On The Road or Donna Tartt I think benefit from a reader having no life experience.

Conversely, I really think that Dickens should only be read once you are a couple of bosses deep into your working life.

[mjzee]

I feel fortunate that in 7th grade the class was assigned to read "1984."  It made a deep impression on me, one which informs my viewpoint to this day.

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I was recently talking to a friend about Richard Brautigan, most famous for Trout Fishing in America.  Without really thinking about what I was saying, I said,  "He's the kind of writer you need to explore when you're in your 20s."  I loved his books, but I can't imagine reading one now.  I feel much the same about Tom Robbins. I thought Still Life with Woodpecker was brilliant when I read it age 23 or so, but again, his stuff would not interest me now.

In college in the '70's, I liked both Trout Fishing in America and Robbins's Only Cowgirls Get The Blues.  You might be right that they would appeal to a reader of a certain age, but I might add of a certain time.  Both books are deeply hippy-ish, immersed in that counter-culture, in a way that even a reader in the 1980s would not understand or find appealing.  

[Teasing the Korean]

6 minutes ago, mjzee said:

In college in the '70's, I liked both Trout Fishing in America and Robbins's Only Cowgirls Get The Blues.  You might be right that they would appeal to a reader of a certain age, but I might add of a certain time.  Both books are deeply hippy-ish, immersed in that counter-culture, in a way that even a reader in the 1980s would not understand or find appealing.  

I read both authors in the 1980s, although I spent the 1980s trying to relive the 1960s and 70s.  The 80s is by far my most hated decades.

Brautigan was indeed embraced by the counter-culture, but I have read that he didn't really identify with hippies.

[BillF]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

 

On The Road or Donna Tartt I think benefit from a reader having no life experience.

 

I clearly made a mistake, then, continuing to read both in my 80s.🙁

[Rabshakeh]

35 minutes ago, BillF said:

I clearly made a mistake, then, continuing to read both in my 80s.🙁

Probably I'm wrong. I'm just not sure they'd have made the same impact if you'd read them for the first time in your 80s.

[gvopedz]

I feel fortunate I read Jorge Luis Borges when I was in high school.  One day during those years, I also watched a live TV interview of Borges - he answered every question with an extraordinary range of anecdotes, stories, humor, observations, etc. - an unforgettable interview.

However, I believe Borges can be read at any age.

[jazzbo]

There are authors whose work I have re-read over the decades and gotten more out of them each time as my life experience has increased.

For example Philip K. Dick, Henry Miller, Raymond Chandler, Cordwainer Smith.

[Teasing the Korean]

7 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

There are authors whose work I have re-read over the decades and gotten more out of them each time as my life experience has increased.

Same here.  But have you ever experienced the opposite?

[jazzbo]

Not in the same way you seem to. I have re-read books I read as a young person and remembered why I loved to escape into their universes, and realized they are cruder entertainment now than they were then--but I still enjoy the re-reading and still enjoy re-reading some. . .authors such as Burroughs, Stout, Moorcock, Collins, A.A. Fair, et al.

Edited January 7, 2023 by jazzbo

[Matthew]

19 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Same here.  But have you ever experienced the opposite?

Herman Hesse.

[mjazzg]

I reread 'On The Road' last year, about 40 years after I first read it. I certainly appreciated the writing more this time round but also had less truck with some of its self-indulgence.

[porcy62]

I started re-read what I could call my personal western canon: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Kafka, Conrad, Fitzgerald, Stevenson, Dickens, Mann, Melville, Musil, Simenon, Shakespeare and some more I forgot at the moment, plus some Italian writers. I read all of them in my youth. In general the more I get older better should be the novels. This is the fiction I can read now, that a part I read history. 

[HutchFan]

I read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath a few times in my early-20s, and it made a huge impact.  I'm not sure that would have the same effect now that I'm in my mid-50s. 

Maybe I should re-read it to find out.   

 

[Milestones]

I first read The Grapes of Wrath in my early 20's.  I thought it was good, if not as good as the impressive film version.  The second time was in my early 40's, at which point I regarded it as a definite masterpiece in American literature.  I still love the film, but the novel is a somewhat different beast--and it certainly features Steinbeck at the height of his multiple skills and powers.    

 

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Milestones