A History of Reading
A few nights ago I finished Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading, which was on the reading list for a class taught by an instructor I'll be having this summer. Turns out it's not on the list for the class I'll be taking, but it was still very enjoyable.
Manguel is almost unbelievably erudite, but with a welcoming writing style. He's from Argentina but has lived in many places, both as a child (his father was a diplomat) and as an adult. Canada, Israel and France were three of the places he mentioned spending significant time. And he has traveled all over the world. He's written several books, including fiction, but his career has been as an editor for a number of publishing houses.
The lovely thing is that this book was not constructed as a textbook, as the title might suggest, but simply as a series of reflections on aspects of reading, told through stories of readers and their experiences. He talks about the invention of writing, learning to read, the ancient practice of reading out loud (silent reading was rare until the Middle Ages), censorship, translation... the table of contents is really quite interesting in itself, to realize all the subjects that 'reading' is bound up with.
This really isn't a history of Manguel's own reading (which would be completely fascinating) but he does share some autobiographical details. The most amazing to me is that he knew the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges personally! WOW. As a teenager in Buenos Aires, Manguel had a part-time job in a bookshop where the elderly Borges was a customer. Borges had lost his sight by that point, and depended on various people to read to him. Manguel joined the small ranks of Borges' readers and for several years had the privilege of reading aloud to Borges in the evenings. Apparently part of the reader's task was to write down the margin notes that Borges would have made in the book himself, so Manguel got to hear Borges' reactions to the text at hand and many other reflections on literature.
It seemed quite natural therefore that Manguel's book had a very Borgesian quality to me. It didn't have the fantastical elements of Borges' writing, but it did have the same feeling of a scholar who has read so widely and experienced so much that all literatures, from every period and from every part of the world, are as one world to him. When I read Borges, that sense of his perception into symbolic meanings and hidden connections pretty much strikes me breathless with admiration. It was very cool finding a strong echo of that in Manguel.
Manguel is almost unbelievably erudite, but with a welcoming writing style. He's from Argentina but has lived in many places, both as a child (his father was a diplomat) and as an adult. Canada, Israel and France were three of the places he mentioned spending significant time. And he has traveled all over the world. He's written several books, including fiction, but his career has been as an editor for a number of publishing houses.
The lovely thing is that this book was not constructed as a textbook, as the title might suggest, but simply as a series of reflections on aspects of reading, told through stories of readers and their experiences. He talks about the invention of writing, learning to read, the ancient practice of reading out loud (silent reading was rare until the Middle Ages), censorship, translation... the table of contents is really quite interesting in itself, to realize all the subjects that 'reading' is bound up with.
This really isn't a history of Manguel's own reading (which would be completely fascinating) but he does share some autobiographical details. The most amazing to me is that he knew the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges personally! WOW. As a teenager in Buenos Aires, Manguel had a part-time job in a bookshop where the elderly Borges was a customer. Borges had lost his sight by that point, and depended on various people to read to him. Manguel joined the small ranks of Borges' readers and for several years had the privilege of reading aloud to Borges in the evenings. Apparently part of the reader's task was to write down the margin notes that Borges would have made in the book himself, so Manguel got to hear Borges' reactions to the text at hand and many other reflections on literature.
It seemed quite natural therefore that Manguel's book had a very Borgesian quality to me. It didn't have the fantastical elements of Borges' writing, but it did have the same feeling of a scholar who has read so widely and experienced so much that all literatures, from every period and from every part of the world, are as one world to him. When I read Borges, that sense of his perception into symbolic meanings and hidden connections pretty much strikes me breathless with admiration. It was very cool finding a strong echo of that in Manguel.