June 15th, 2012
ggantz

Siri Hustvedt On Reading

I discovered ironies in Middlemarch I had not fully appreciated before, no doubt the product of my advancing age, which has been paralleled by the internal accumulation of more and more books that have altered my thoughts and created a broader context for my reading. The text is the same, but I am not (Pg. 137)

Openness to a book is vital, and openness is simply a willingness to be changed by what we read. (Pg. 138)

Reading is not a purely cognitive act of deciphering signs; it is taking in a dance of meanings that has resonance far beyond the merely intellectual. (Pg. 139)

Reading is creative listening that alters the reader. (Pg. 140)

From Living, Thinking, Looking, by Siri Hustvedt. Picador, p. 133. 2012
This essay was originally published in
Columbia; 49 (2011)

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