"Insensibly and despite himself, Hollister began sliding into the intellectual lethargy of the camp. He had read the few books - and with his trained memory, he could only read a book once -..." (p. 182)
But, if he has memorized the book word for word, then he must be able to recite the text internally and then
to notice new nuances as we do when rereading? Every possible ramification of an entire book cannot be simultaneously present to his mind, can it? Are there people with that kind of memory who never need to reread a book? I imagine that they would "reread" by inwardly reviewing the text and then drawing new conclusions or seeing new connections with other texts or data?
The entire basis of this blog is systematic rereading of rich texts. I imagine that someone with a photographic memory rereads internally instead of externally.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
You raised a good point, one I never thought of before. Even if Hollister's photographic memory gave him perfect RECALL of texts, he surely should not have grasped all their meanings, nuances, implications, etc., all at the same time. So he should have been able to think about SOME of those texts for a while.
And, even allowing for hard living conditions, and a suspicious gov't, I think there should have been more books available on Venus than the story says. Even the USSR eventually relaxed a tiny bit to allow the works of writers like Dostoevsky to be republished. There should have been similar writers judged "harmless" on Venus
Ad astra! Sean
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