Reread something this week that I first read at nineteen, and the…

Reread something this week that I first read at nineteen, and the experience was close to meeting somebody who remembers you rather differently from the way you remember yourself.

At nineteen I thought it was about the love affair, which it is not, in any way at all: the love affair runs to about nine pages, and the book is very clearly about money and about a house, and I read every word of it at nineteen and came away holding a completely different novel.

I do not think I misread it so much as read the parts I had the equipment for, which raises the fairly uncomfortable question of what, at the moment, I am reading straight past.