When someone brings this matter up, usually the following quote is posted:
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
While I understand how perfectly natural and reasonable this phenomenon is, it still irks me from time to time. Isn't it quite irritable that, say, eight month after finishing a novel, I can recall only some vague details and general atmosphere, maybe one or two motifs?
For example, the books I read about 2 years ago, that captivated me for weeks after I had finished them – Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Idiot by Dostoyevsky or Solaris by Stanislaw Lem – are now almost vanished from my memory, for I recount only their outline, some random impressions. I bet I couldn't speak about them for more than ten minutes if I were forbidden to make vague statements like 'the writing was amazing', 'the characters were multi-dimensional', etc. Theoretically I even lack the proof that I ever opened them.
And the matter is worse! This summer I have read, among others, two magnificent novels that produced on me the most profound impression – East of Eden by John Steinbeck and Joke by Milan Kundera. I was so excited that I hastened to write some (flawed) reviews here on Reddit. And now I feel that they are fading away from my memory, the same novels that I reckoned the height of literature, among the finest masterpieces I have ever read!
This week I finished two novellas of Steinbeck that held me engrossed from first page to last, and I can't help thinking that in six months time, I won't even remember the characters' names.
Once again, I perfectly understand that this all natural and intrinsical. I can only hope that in the end there is something indefinite that persists from every book, remaining somewhere in my subconsciousness.
by ArthRol