| Reading Life: Books for the Ages Contributor(s): Birkerts, Sven (Author) |
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ISBN: 1555974643 ISBN-13: 9781555974640 Publisher: Graywolf Press OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback Published: April 2007 Annotation: In 12 far-reaching and intimate essays, Birkerts reflects upon his first readings of classic texts, including "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Lolita," and what later encounters reveal about time, memory, and the murmuring transistors of selfhood. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Literary Collections | Essays |
| Dewey: 028.9 |
| LCCN: 2006929504 |
| Physical Information: 0.59" H x 6.08" W x 8.94" (0.70 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Birkerts, Sven: - Sven Birkerts is the author of several books, including The Art of Time in Memoir, Reading Life, Readings, and The Gutenberg Elegies. He has taught at Harvard University and currently directs the Bennington Writing Seminars and is the editor of AGNI. He lives in Massachusetts. |