Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Are you in the Reading race?

A mad scramble to read every writer we hear about can launch us into an entirely new mind-space

Some people must have a new gadget the minute their brother-in-law has it. I have never envied other people's electronics, but I have my own egotistical weaknesses. When someone quotes a writer I have never read, I feel a little smaller and must go out and find his or her book to make that feeling go away.

Other competitors are more glib. For instance, you're discussing Dickens and you talk of the double-narrator device in Bleak House. The other person (who hasn't read Bleak House) then shoots back, “But have you read The Mystery of Edwin Drood?” No, you admit. “Well, you should read Drood, because that's where Dickens really gets clever with the narrative perspective.” As the more diffident competitor, you then rush out to find Drood, whereas the other chap's purposes have already been served. And he hasn't read Drood either. No one has.

But ideally the spirit of competition launches you into an entirely new mind-space. That's how I discovered Garrison Keillor. My brother quoted a line from Keillor when announcing the name of his baby boy. I instantly wrote back to ask about that author, and he told me that some of my emails about village life reminded him of Keillor's style. I have since become a Keillor devotee, howling over his essays in Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home, and his radio monologue The News from Lake Wobegon, which I listen to on CD.

Full report here Hindu

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