Description
In a collection of twelve incisive and intimate essays, the noted critic, essayist, and author of The Gutenberg Elegies reexamines key works of fiction in terms of the personal meaning and influence they have had in his life, covering such works as The Catcher in the Rye, To the Lighthouse, Humboldt's Gift, and Lolita. Original.
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A new, compelling collection of essays by Sven Birkerts, "one of America's most distinguished, eloquent servants of the poetry and fiction that matter" (Susan Sontag)Reading, the mind's traffic in signs and signifiers, is the most dynamic, changeful, and possibly transformational act we can imagine. To have read a work and have been strongly affected by it—and then to come back to it after many years—can be a foundation-shaking enterprise.In Reading Life, virtuoso critic and essayist Sven Birkerts examines what it means to return to resonant works of fiction—the books one thinks of "covetously, as private properties," the "personal signposts" of one's inner life. For Birkerts, these include The Catcher in the Rye, Humboldt's Gift, To the Lighthouse, and Lolita. In twelve far-reaching and intimate essays, Birkerts reflects upon his first readings and what later encounters reveal about time, memory, and the murmuring transistors of selfhood.
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