why I will not read my own books

My usual exercise when I have a new book come out is to read it immediately. But I’ve found this so unenjoyable in recent years (it’s like staring at yourself in the mirror or listening to your own voice on tape for hours at a time) that I’m simply going to stop reading my own books until some point late in life when I’m looking back and taking stock of everything. I already read the drafts and the proofs countless times before publication anyway.

Roland Barthes speaks in the interviews of having much the same feeling. Luckily, he did go back and read them all again shortly before his fatal accident. But it can really drag you down in a number of ways to read your own stuff.

The only problem with this approach, which I already sometimes face, is that occasionally you run into readers who know your own work better than you do, which can be a bit embarrassing. Once in awhile I’ve met people who an correct me if I say that I spoke about something in, say, Prince of Networks: “No, it was Guerrilla Metaphysics,” they’ll correct me.

That’s a strange sensation, and yes, an embarrassing one, but it’s a small price to me for not having to read your own books.

I’m guessing that this is something that varies greatly from one author to another. There are probably some people who profit greatly from regularly checking what they said here or there. Personally, I find it more and more excruciating as the years go by. In part, I think it’s the fear of being overly influenced by oneself and falling into repetition in that way, rather than continuing to move forward based on new experiences, new influences, and so forth.

In any case, though I’m happy to promote the newly released The Prince and the Wolf, The Quadruple Object, and Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making as my publishers deserve to have me do, I’ve read them all more than enough in draft/proof form and may not open them again for 15-20 years. We’ll see. Odd motivations for doing things arise from time to time.