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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Sven Birkerts teaches at Mount Holyoke College and the Bennington Writing Seminary. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Previously published in the American Scholar, the Believer and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among others, these critical responses address a group of novels--including The Catcher in the Rye, The Good Soldier and The Moviegoer--that chart the "topographical reference points" on the rough "map of [Birkerts's] inwardness." Though he has read many of the books several times, Birkerts, who teaches at Harvard and edits the journal Agni, is still often "surprised, going back, to find the work had grown fresh again, full of unexpected turns and nuances." Most of the essays are structured to reflect this unanticipated and gratifying energy by beginning at the moment of first encounter with the books under discussion--"the frisson of first connection": Madame Bovary in a Montana bunkhouse or the discovery of Humboldt's Gift after the breakup of an important romantic relationship. Looking back on the lonely, estranged and marginal selves that found (and still find) solace in the "disputatious inner swing" of the "secret Masonic life of reading," Birkerts uncovers a stabilizing realization. Through "shifts" and "twists of vantage," this collection recounts the essential transformational value of a lifetime spent discovering the self that "comes fully awake only in the dream of a book." (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Review
A literary critic (Readings, 1999, etc.) and professor (English/Harvard Univ.) revisits some novels he read years ago and finds in them both enduring beauty and a sometimes shifting resonance. Birkerts has always been a bibliophagist, from his early days roaming in The Jungle Book and adventuring with the Hardy Boys and James Bond, and he recognizes one of his life's great fortunes--to be able to read and write both for pleasure and profit. Some of the books he re-examines are predictable choices--The Catcher in the Rye, Women in Love, Madame Bovary, Lolita--but there are some surprises, too, both mild (The Moviegoer, The Beggar Maid) and major (Pan and Montauk). He says that Humboldt's Gift is his favorite. Birkerts has arranged these essays in rough chronological order. In adolescence, he was captivated by The Catcher in the Rye and Holden's remarkable voice; at 19, it was Madame Bovary, which he read while working on a Montana cattle ranch. Walker Percy helped him through some tough personal issues (lack of money, among them). He confesses to an inability to read Henry James's The Ambassadors in his youth, despite repeated attempts, and is proud that, at age 52, he finally completed it. The strongest and most engaging essays weave the personal with the literary (his fine piece on D.H. Lawrence, for example). At times--especially when dealing with books more unfamiliar to general readers--Birkerts spends much time summarizing and quoting, and his emotional, provocative voice becomes too faint a whisper. But the author is a remarkable reader, sensitive and alert, and these qualities pervade much of his writing. "Such is the power of memory," he writes of Virginia Woolf, "and such is its human extent: to create in the person the sensation of vanished circumstance living on." Great novels, in his view, are all books of revelations. Birkerts is a dedicated reader and a novelist's best friend. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Rereading favorite novels is the theme underpinning the latest book by an eminent American critic, who here presents a series of erudite but certainly not passionless discussions about the novels he is most prone to return to. His wide-ranging list includes J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Knut Hamsun's Pan, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Alice Munro's Beggar Maid. These 11 essays, some of which were previously published in various periodicals, form sort of a memory bank for Birkerts as he recalls his initial reactions to these books and shares further takes on them upon subsequent readings. In looking back, he is able to specify the special charged encounter between himself and the work that he first experienced and explain his later understanding of why that first encounter so impressed him. This is not watered-down literary criticism for the masses; serious fiction readers will obtain valuable guidance in articulating their own private literary passions. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2007 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In these 12 essays, noted essayist, reviewer, and editor Birkerts (The Gutenberg Elegies) presents himself as the consummate reader. Through his active engagement with works like J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Henry James's The Ambassadors, he takes the reader on a marvelous journey into the very heart of the books as well as into his own heart. Birkerts writes with extraordinary sensitivity about the experience of reading these works at a particular moment in his life and then of rereading them and reflecting on them again and again over the years. He mesmerizes the reader with his ability to recall who he was at the time of an earlier reading as well as how the reading itself has helped to shape who he has become. His insightful comments are less about the works themselves than about the discoveries he makes through his complete engagement with the rhythm of the words and the characters brought to life on the page. It is difficult to imagine anyone writing with greater passion and eloquence about the power of books to change our lives. Highly recommended.-Anthony Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
