Julie Vanderburg is a painter, jewelry designer, and mother of three from Seattle, Washington, who is distinguished, among these other things, by the fact that she has been reading the same book over and over again for a very long time. We decided to ask her some questions, by e-mail, about her reading habits.
Rumpus: Is it true you have been reading The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy continuously for twelve years?
Vanderburg: I think it’s ten years. The first time, it took me two years to get through the beginning. Maybe because the novel has one of the most gorgeous beginnings—with furze cutters on the Egdon Heath. On Guy Fawkes Night. When they look up, the sky is still light, when they look down there is darkness.
Rumpus: Why? Why? Why? Why read a novel so many times?
Vanderburg: I decided I was in love with this book and I didn’t want it to go away. Also, I don’t know if you know this but there is a redman in the book (reddleman, I think he’s called, a guy who marks sheep with red paint). There’s some intrigue in the novel having to do with this character. When I lived in the Mission district of San Francisco there was an actual redman there, dyed red head to toe. I met Brad, now my husband, in San Francisco and on one of our first outings we spotted the redman. After a sad and longing hiatus of five years we got back together and pretty soon after we spotted the redman again—for the last time.
Vanderburg: Before I ask the next question: here’s the link to the plot summary on Wikipedia. It’s just way too complicated to include the whole thing here, but people who want to delight in the strangeness of this interview should bone up before proceeding. Okay, how did you first encounter the novel?
Vanderburg: In the past I would buy books in a kind of trance. I got some really good ones this way. But to be perfectly honest I can’t remember how I picked out the Hardy novel. But I know that I convinced my business partner Catherine to read it at about the same time. Or maybe she convinced me. Anyway, she reads it annually. Wait . . . I’m making that phone call . . . Okay, it’s confirmed. I guess the truth is I picked the Hardy up on a wandering, convinced my friend Catherine to read it, and now she keeps it on her bedside.
Rumpus: Why not The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I think is a little better?
Vanderburg: Excuse me?! Ha. No way. The Mayor of Casterbridge . . . it’s a good one but it is too tragic and earnest and has too much hay. I did find it sort of haunting in high school. I was in a Dickens/Hardy class (the teacher had a difficult time creating a title for the class—and as a result there was a Hard/Dick joke making the rounds). I don’t think there is wild woman in that book. Or bonfires! The gambling by the light of fireflies and the bad beau hunk that has a name like wildebeest (Damon Wildeve, –ed.). I don’t think you can compare them. The Return of the Native is pretty much alive. Maybe my continual reading has kept it alive; or maybe the fires on the Heath keep it alive.
Rumpus: When you read other stuff, as I assume you do, do you yearn to return to the Hardy novel?
Vanderburg: Maybe I used to. The Return of the Native fulfilled a longing part of me back when I started but now I don’t really long the same way—although maybe I am now, talking about it. My other insecure novel crush and I think it will be a while before I read it again, is Faulkner’s If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem. I read it during the five years of hiatus—when I was waiting for Brad to come back into my life. This book has the same desperate quality, the same dirt and blood.
Rumpus: These are both love stories. Are you mainly a love-story reader? Do the novels contain rules for the conduct of love in the real world? Is that a reason for reading them? Or is the lover part just coincidental?
Vanderburg: It’s funny I don’t even think of these as love stories but of course they are. I do love a good love story. but I think the character study is more important to me. Thomas Hardy, like E.M. Forster (more love stories), can describe a way of being that I thought I could only ever feel, and this is what I am after. As far as how these rules of conduct apply to the real world I once had a boyfriend who didn’t believe he had a soul and I asked him, “then how are you in love?”
Rumpus: What have you learned in the last six years of reading The Return of the Native that you didn’t learn in the first six years?
Vanderburg: My experience has been the same with this book. I’m the Heath. Sometimes one connects with one character and then the other but really I’ve been the observer all of these years.
Rumpus: Do you have any passages from Hardy committed to memory?
Vanderburg: No, sorry to say, or relieved to say. That’s way too grown up for me. I sometimes even forget the characters’ names. [But] certain scenes [will appear to me]: This week I keep seeing Eustacia walk into the candlelit room in costume. I am surprised each time that she is so little.
Rumpus: What other kinds of things do you like to read?
Vanderburg: I read Jane Austen all the time, too, going on almost twenty years. I’m alternating now with the “Patrick O’Brian” series and I’m trying to read Middlemarch and I’m thinking that Eliot was kind of a snob. I hope I’m wrong. Cynthia Ozick is probably my favorite author. I’ve also been reading Trust for almost twenty years.
Rumpus: Are you superstitious about putting Hardy aside? Do you ever want to stop?
Vanderburg: No, I’ll never. It’s an all day sucker, as my husband likes to say. Well, I do stop, sort of. It’s not totally constant. But it is ongoing.
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Rumpus: Are there other areas in your life wherein you are this obsessive?
Vanderburg: Is this obsessive behavior? I would say I covet more than obsess. I won’t read most books the same way I read Return of the Native over and over. Here’s a counterexample, my grandmother used to keep new clothing in the closet with tags for months before wearing. And I refuse to design with some of my gems to keep them precious . . . So maybe I’m just a hoarder.
