REVISITING FICTION WHEN A SERIES IS DEAD AND GONE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

That series was over.
   And I waved it fare-thee-well in the long-ago of back-in-the-day. Then it occurred to me that I should make sure the series was dead. It wasn't.
   Walter Mosley's detective series featuring Easy Rawlins started its publication history with Devil in a Blue Dress. If you haven't read any of the books, don't start with that one.
   Begin with Gone Fishin', which charts the misadventures of Easy and his friend Mouse in the long-ago of back-in-the-day.
   I am revisiting the series and starting with the fishing expedition.

*

And I'll have to buy more books. (No more books. The shelves can't take them. But perhaps the space above the bookshelves can be pressed into service. Again.)

   Mosley declared a finish to the series a little over a decade ago in the far-off planetoid that was 2007.

   And I thought that was the end of the run. Years flew by, and Mosley gave us another trilogy since the demise of his series.

   Instead of picking up from the revival, I thought I might as well trudge back to the very start and read the whole show.

   So I have good reason to revisit fiction when a series is dead and gone. It's not dead yet.

*

I read books more than once: occupational requirement of being a scribbler. Which book have I read the most? I don't know. But I'll hazard a guess.

   If a series is done historically - the author died in 1900, say - then I could work my way through a series once.

   But if the author still has a pulse and the urge to pen a tale, then I'll do a fair bit of revisiting.

   I'll read the first book. Then I'll discover a sequel. And read the first book again.

   If the third book takes an age to materialise, I'll read the first two again again before carrying on with the business of absorbing tales.

   Non-fiction books bear returning to, just to brush up on a subject or to compare alongside a new book on that subject.

   I must invoke the Jules Verne Rule. When reading Verne, chances are you are reading the most atrocious "translations" of Verne. Once I discovered a top translator in the name of Butcher, I had to revisit Verne. Though...

   You can't revisit decent translations of Verne if you've read slop before. I had to revisit Verne for the first time ever. (Let's put that on the movie poster.)

   The same applies to books you thought you'd read. You read them again for the first time ever.

   I haven't had to revisit a book with the last page ripped out. Not yet.

   Some books are interrupted. I can pick those up again from where I left off, even if an indecent amount of time passed in the great meanwhile. The choice is to continue from the very next word or to revisit the start of the book. And an easy choice it is. The longer the great meanwhile, the more likely it is I'll start afresh.

*

Perhaps a series is taken over by living hands, after the intellectual property is plucked from the cold dead digits of the creator. Is reading the new stuff in a series really revisiting the work?

   The new writer, presumably, revisited the work in order to build on the foundations of what came before. But there is no legal guarantee of this. Nor should there be.

*

Revisiting Easy Rawlins set me thinking about revisiting all sorts of books and in all kinds of ways. Proper revisits. Improper revisits. Clandestine trips. Detours. Muddy ground leading to muddier waters.

   That's a lot of contemplation. But there lies an occupational hazard, lurking on the stacks: books set you to thinking. And that's as it should be.

   If I'm not around for an age, I've gone fishin'. Not literally: literaturely.