Reading Life: Books for the Ages

Front Cover
Graywolf Press, Apr 3, 2007 - Literary Criticism - 256 pages

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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Contents

The Reading Life
3
Childrens Crusade
25
Loves Wound Loves Salve
41
Copyright

5 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

Alan Bates Ambassadors awareness become Beggar Maid believe Bellow Binx Birkin Catcher changed character Charlie course created D. H. Lawrence Dowell Dowell's dream early Edvarda Edward effect Emma Emma's emotional encounter everything experience fact fantasy feel felt finally Flaubert Glahn Hanratty Holden Holden Caulfield Humbert Humbert Humboldt Humboldt's Gift Ian Fleming idea imagined inner intense James Kathleen kind knew later Lawrence Leonora Lighthouse literary living Lolita look Madame Bovary memory move Moviegoer Munro mystery Nabokov narrative never novel passage passion prose psychological pull Quilty Ramsay Ramsay's re-reading read the novel reader realization recognition relationship remember romantic Rose Rose's Royal Beatings scene seemed sense sentence sexual somehow story Strether suddenly SVEN BIRKERTS things thought tion turn Vladimir Nabokov voice Walker Percy whole woman Women in Love Woolf words writing young

About the author (2007)

Sven Birkerts is the author of Readings, The Gutenberg Elegies, and a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades. He teaches at Harvard University and at the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is the editor of Agni. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

TitleReading Life: Books for the Ages
AuthorSven Birkerts
Editionillustrated
PublisherGraywolf Press, 2007
Original fromthe University of Michigan
DigitizedJan 19, 2010
ISBN1555974643, 9781555974640
Length256 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Collections / Essays
Literary Criticism / Books & Reading
  
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