Reading backwards

     I'm well on with Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit and enjoying it immensely. More on the book as a whole when I'm finished it, but for now an interesting idea:

Ms. Tharp is an extremely well read lady with a mind which is wide open to inspiration and finds links, patterns and connections everywhere, whether they occur in music, art, anthropology, myth, history, literature or her immediate surroundings. When she is creating a dance she looks to any and all of these for her themes or starting points, but once she has an idea she explores it thoroughly and one of the ways in which she does this is, as she calls it, "reading archaeologically". She reads backwards in time, starting with a contemporary work or an author's latest book and going on to something which predates it, and so on back to the earliest or original text.

    She says: "A lot of people read chronologically...They want to read along as the author grows from youth to maturity. I do it the other way, as if I'm conducting a dig. I start with where the author ended and finish where he started....I feel like a detective solving the mystery of how the writer got that way, not how the writer ended up....The surest method for finding a path through a maze is to start at the end and work your way back to the beginning."

    She has a number of other reading habits, e.g. "competitively", "for growth", "reading fat" (i.e. around a subject or a writer) and she has an addiction to the OED, but of reading 'backwards' she suggests applying this to a novelist's body of work and "you'll learn just as much about the author's recurring themes, philosophy and style... but you'll see them from an entirely different point of view."

     Anyone tempted ? I am - I'll just have to choose an author.

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

I'm not sure that I have ever read other than randomly unless the novels form an obvious sequence I guess.

[Deirdre]

As soon as I saw this book on your earlier post, I knew it would end up on my current list! You seem to be enjoying it. Can't wait for your review! I am going to get it anyway!

Happy Easter!

[Maria]

Dearest Cornflower, I thought you might like the film Once, set in Ireland. Nice and romantic and about 2 people who can relate to each other. It reminds me of someone I fell in love with. We shared interests and yet it didn't work out.

[Sara]

I really liked the film "Once". It reminded me of an Irish guy I was great friends with and we liked each other a lot. One of was married so it ended a bit like in that film. He was a writer and poet so it was a similar story. What do you think of it Cornflower? Or I should say "What do you t'ink of it". Funny accents in it.

[Margaret Powling]

Just to say HAPPY EASTER! And if the weather is bad with you, then HAPPY READING! But I could not read a sequence of books backwards, i.e. starting with the last. I like to read from the beginning of a series in order to see how both the story and the style of writing develop. Perhaps Miss Tharp lines up her books starting not with A but with Z? Nothing wrong in that, I suppose, it just wouldn't do for me.

[Peter the flautist]

I was intrigued by Twlya Tharp's statement "The surest method for finding a path through a maze is to start at the end and work your way back to the beginning." Now I am no expert on mazes but I don't think this is likely to be true in general. Indeed some mazes will cause maze-solving algorithms like the well known "Wall Follower" (always keep left hand on wall) to fail if you start at the centre of the maze (the goal) AND it is surrounded by a closed circuit. On the other hand some algorithms only work if you start in the middle of the maze and wish to escape (for example the Pledge algorithm) to the outside.
If you are interested in mazes how they can be created and solved then this site may be of interest: http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth.htm

Dark Puss

[Lee]

When I saw your blog title I anticipated another magazine reader like myself who flicks to the back and browses through to the front before reading in a conventional manner from the beginning. Why? I don't know - have always done it! The left hand pages of a magazine are not the first one focuses on - so maybe my subconscious is ensuring they get some attention....! Unravelling a book series - the book " Stuart a life backwards" springs to mind - similar principle I guess tho not sure about a series where aspects are referred to in later books that may be the crux of an earlier book... Interesting idea.

[Simon Thomas]

What a nice lady/book/idea that sounds. As I have only read Rebecca by D du M, and shall be buying a boxset of her work soon, I think I might apply this approach to her novels. And fascinating it will be, I am sure.