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March 7, 2017
“The silent reader is an enigma …
This is why social media fetishizes books as objects.It is easier to express (and inhabit) a reading aesthetic than it is to describe reading … Reading is multifarious—if we were to develop a list of features common to every literary experience it would be very short—yet people want to make rules about books. We are driven to evaluate them, and through them ourselves … I have seen and experienced the discomfort associated with failing to understand or finish a text, and the impulse to measure and rank and explain. Teaching literature often means diagnosing and circumnavigating these insecurities … That we turn to books in times of great emotional need, during political crises, and to find a way through mourning speaks to their power. But, as with friendships, they do not need to be life changing to be valuable.” Against literary evangelicals | Overland literary journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 7, 2017 10:59 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
If they are valuable they will be life changing for us in some significant way. Perception-consideration-evaluation-prioritization are a dynamic that produces change -- beneficial or detrimental.
Teach yourself well and learn adequately.
Posted by: Howard Nelson at March 7, 2017 3:18 PM