On the Experience of Reading

All my life I have feared drudgery. When Sharon Dunn first suggested that I edit a section of essays for this issue, my monitors went to red alert. I promptly sought the path of least resistance. I picked a broad topic—reading—and then contacted those writers that I knew, or knew of, who might have something interesting to say and who might be induced to say it for the not-exactly-princely sum that a small journal can afford to pay. I was asking, in short, for a labor of love. And half the people I contacted came through with just that. . . .

It is hardly accidental that so many of the pieces gathered here come in the form of “notes.” Books, as most of these readers would acknowledge, exceed even the material world in diversity. One can no more imagine writing an essay on reading than one can imagine an essay entitled, in all seriousness, “The World.”

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