September 28, 2024

	By Melissa Kirsch

Good morning. If we can't remember the things we've read and watched and even loved, do they still "count"?

An illustration of a woman looking at goldfish.

María Jesús Contreras

At capacity

Everyone I know seems to be talking about their memory lately, how it isn't what it used to be. Mine isn't, and there's some comfort in commiseration. Yes, we're getting older, isn't it something to observe, how we can no longer so easily recall names or events or what it was we were just about to say.

My memory used to be so good I'd have to hide it so it didn't weird people out. I'd pretend not to remember someone's full name and their kids' names and how they used to own a coffee shop outside Albany, lest they think I'd freakishly compiled a dossier on them after our brief conversation at a party three years ago. Now, I'm rewatching a TV series I remember liking in 2022 because I can't remember even the broadest outline of the plot. I constantly jot notes on stuff that used to surface in the normal churn of my brain's functioning: funny remarks people make, bits of gossip, summaries of conversations. I take minutes on my own life.

Sure, age probably has a lot to do with it. For a while, I blamed quarantine and stress for dulling my edge (one friend suggested I might be in my "butter knife era"). But lately the metaphor that seems most apt is that of a computer: It feels as if my hard drive is full. I'm reading and watching and listening to so much content — in addition to living life and having actual experiences, never mind daydreams and nightmares and extended reveries — that it seems I'm running out of disk space. I can't count on things to auto-save anymore. Since I can't selectively delete stuff the way I would with an actual hard drive, I'm left creating backups in notebooks, mistrusting my own outmoded technology.

I'm particularly interested in how a full hard drive is affecting my consumption of culture. Cultural omnivores keep lists of the books they've read and the movies they've watched, adding to their knowledge and fluency with each item checked off. As I went through The Times's recent list of the 100 best books of the century, I was gratified by how many I'd read but wondered if a book still counted if I couldn't remember much about it.

What does it mean for a book, a show, an experience to "count," anyway? Do you need to be able to recall the plot in detail? Should you be able to describe scenes or bits of dialogue, larger themes, cultural relevance? Or is it enough to just remember enjoying a book, or to be able to conjure a feeling it inspired? I was mulling these questions when I came across this essay by James Collins from 2010. In it, he describes books that he loved about which he remembers nothing: "All I associate with them is an atmosphere and a stray image or two, like memories of trips I took as a child."

Collins suspected, as I do, that the books he can't remember must have had an effect on his brain anyway, that the experience of reading and engaging with the texts must have changed him in some deeper way, leaving "a kind of mental radiation — that continues to affect me even if I can't detect it." I want to believe that my immersion in the fascinating characters and rich plot of "Creation Lake" by Rachel Kushner are performing some kind of alchemy in my brain even if — and it seems unthinkable, halfway through the book — I am likely to forget it all.

Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist, confirmed for Collins that inability to recall a book's details shouldn't be taken as evidence that we didn't assimilate it in some way. "We can't retrieve the specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James's, there is a wraith of memory," she told him. "The information you get from a book is stored in networks. We have an extraordinary capacity for storage, and much more is there than you realize. It is in some way working on you even though you aren't thinking about it." More computer parallels!

After reading Collins's essay, I did what I always do when someone's writing resonates with me — I looked him up. I found a charming 2008 article about him and his home in Virginia, learned about a book he wrote, which the Times review called "a great big sunny lemon chiffon pie of a novel," and reserved it from the library. This, I realized, 15 minutes and six open tabs into my digression, is why my brain's coffers are bursting. There's too much information, and I'm absolutely helpless to resist it. I look forward to reading Collins's novel, and I look forward to remembering absolutely none of it.

For more

How to prevent memory loss.
Certain aspects of memory actually get better as we age, according to a neuroscientist.
Some memory lapses are a normal part of brain function.
"People believe that memory should be effortless, but their expectations for how much they should remember are totally out of whack with how much they're capable of remembering." A memory researcher on how to make precious moments last.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film and TV

Maggie Smith on "Downton Abbey," dressed in a maroon shawl at a hat.

Maggie Smith in "Downton Abbey." Nick Briggs/PBS, via Associated Press

Maggie Smith died at 89. She had an illustrious career, winning Oscars and Tonys, but maintained a relatively quiet life until "Downton Abbey" made her a megastar in her mid-70s. Read her Times obituary.
"Megalopolis," Francis Ford Coppola's $120 million passion project, is now in theaters. If audiences don't turn out, it could go down as a hall-of-fame flop.
Our critic calls "Megalopolis" a daring, strange hallucination of a movie. "It's a little nuts, but our movies could use more craziness," she writes.
"The Wild Robot," a new animated family film, has dazzling visuals and frank ideas about the circle of life.
Disney paused production of a movie adaptation of a Neil Gaiman book over allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Gaiman, the noted British author, has denied wrongdoing.

THE LATEST NEWS

2024 Election

Kamala Harris speaking at a lectern, with a dark blue backdrop.

Kamala Harris in Pittsburgh, Pa., this week. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Kamala Harris narrowly leads Donald Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin and is ahead in Nebraska's Second Congressional District, New York Times/Siena College polls find.
The polls point to a very close presidential election, Nate Cohn explains, even as Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio are ahead.
Trump met with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, who looked on grimly as Trump claimed that Vladimir Putin wanted the war in Ukraine to stop.
Harris, visiting the southern border in Arizona, pledged to continue President Biden's asylum restrictions. Her campaign said she supported tougher limits than he's put in place.
The Justice Department accused three members of an Iranian cyberespionage unit of hacking the Trump campaign.

CULTURE CALENDAR

	By Andrew LaVallee

📺 "Saturday Night Live" (you know when): The 50th season starts tonight. Making their "S.N.L." debuts are the host, Jean Smart, fresh off her Emmy win for "Hacks"; the musical guest, Jelly Roll; and three new featured players. Maybe we'll see Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris?

🏦 "Industry" (Sunday): Count me among those who slept on this bracing, stressful HBO drama during its first two seasons, but over the summer it seemed like everyone was watching it, so I binged until I was caught up, and it's not too late for you to do the same. The Season 3 finale on Sunday picks up after an epic fight between two of the lead characters and the Lehman-like implosion of the bank that once employed them. (Watch with captions on so you don't miss a single Sagar Radia zinger.)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

	By Elisabeth Egan

"Intermezzo," by Sally Rooney: Regardless of what you think of Sally Rooney, the Irish novelist who brought us "Conversations With Friends," "Normal People" and "Beautiful World, Where Are You," now is her time to shine. If you have no idea who I'm talking about, picture the Taylor Swift of the literary world, complete with midnight release parties, coveted merch and legions of fans poring over carefully meted out biographical information. Like Swift, Rooney has the goods, though the hoopla around her can be exhausting. Enter the "Intermezzo" era, in which two very different brothers grieve their father in opposite directions, with complicated love lives as their common denominator. It's possible that we've reached peak Rooney (and it would be nice if she used quotation marks), but this novel still contains simple, true sentences worth knowing by heart. Read our review here.

Start your holiday shopping early

As one of Wirecutter's gifting experts, it's my duty to inform you that, yes, it's time to start "soft shopping" for the holidays. For me, this means adding items to my cart, bookmarking sites, jotting down notes about my recipients and making a plan, all at a leisurely pace. I like really thinking about gifts — and ultimately give better ones — when it's not frenetic. They tend to be more thoughtful and personal, and cheaper. If you need inspiration, we've spent thousands of hours researching and testing to find the best gifts under $100. And if you want to be a better gift giver: We're hoping our new newsletter, The Gift, full of handpicked gems, can help. —Hannah Morrill

GAME OF THE WEEK

Two women, one in a black uniform and the other in a red uniform, playing basketball.

Kelsey Plum of the Aces, right, driving to the basket against the Liberty. Evan Yu/NBAE via Getty Images

Las Vegas Aces vs. New York Liberty, W.N.B.A. playoffs: When these two teams met last year in the finals, the Aces were the favorites — defending champions, No. 1 seed. Now the Liberty are on top. They were the best team in the league this year, and they swept the Aces in the regular season. Keep an eye on the guards in this series: The Aces veteran Chelsea Gray is returning to prime form, while the Liberty's Sabrina Ionescu is hitting a new level, as evidenced by her 36-point performance in the last round. Game 1 is Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern on ABC.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was throwaway.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines.

And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. —Melissa

P.S. The most popular story in The Morning this week was about a Russian soldier who deserted the front lines. It is one of The New York Times Magazine's most ambitious stories ever.

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson

News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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