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Compared with reading, the act of rereading is far more personal—it involves a complex interaction of our past selves, our present selves, and literature. With candor and humor, this “inspired intellectual romp, part memoir, part criticism” takes us on a guided tour of the author’s own return to books she once knew—from the plays of Shakespeare to twentieth-century novels by Kingsley Amis and Ian McEwan, from the childhood favorite I Capture the Castle to classic novels such as Anna Karenina and Huckleberry Finn, from nonfiction by Henry Adams to poetry by Wordsworth—as she reflects on how the passage of time and the experience of aging has affected her perceptions of them (Lawrence Weschler).
A cultural critic and the acclaimed author of Why I Read, Wendy Lesser conveys an infectious love of reading and inspires us all to take another look at the books we’ve read to find the unexpected treasures they might offer.
“Delightful.” —Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce
“Anyone who has ever approached a once favorite book later in life . . . will find in this memoir moments of bittersweet recognition.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Reflect[s] deeply and candidly on how a reader’s life experiences alter her perceptions of literature . . . [Lesser] has truly fascinating and original things to say about a compelling assortment of writers, including George Orwell, George Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare.” —Booklist
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 1, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780547346892
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780547346892
- File size: 552 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 6, 2002
Lesser is the founding editor of the Threepenny Review and author of Pictures at an Execution: An Inquiry into the Subject of Murder and His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art (among other titles). She defines herself here as a "self-employed, self-designated arbiter of cultural taste," but few of these 15 short essays match the intensity of her best work. Lack of enthusiasm repeatedly becomes the point here: one essay begins: "I was never very fond of either Pope or Wordsworth," while another notes "it was only when I found that both Anna Karenina and Middlemarch had failed to work their magic on me, this time around, that my diminished reaction took on a potential interest." James Joyce's Ulysses fails to compel. The tone throughout is unrelievedly personal ("Antony and Cleopatra was my favorite for a long time, and I still think it is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays"), which works well when the subject is close to home, as with Hitchcock's Vertigo, set in her home city: "My own ghost, in relation to this movie my own Carlotta, if you will is San Francisco.... Like Scotty, I am mourning a beloved who never really existed." Essays on John Milton, Henry Adams and George Orwell aim middle-to-low on the brow, sometimes with a dash of odd coyness: in a chapter on modern British novelist Ian McEwan, Lesser mentions a decade-old review she wrote of one of his books, stating, "I will spare you the entire review" and then goes on to quote a page and a half of it. Potential readers would do well to stick to the prolific Lesser's fresher and more enthusiastic The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters. -
April 1, 2002
Lesser is the founding editor of the Threepenny Review
and author of Pictures at an Execution: An Inquiry into the Subject of Murder
and His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art
(among other titles). She defines herself here as a "self-employed, self-designated arbiter of cultural taste," but few of these 15 short essays match the intensity of her best work. Lack of enthusiasm repeatedly becomes the point here: one essay begins: "I was never very fond of either Pope or Wordsworth," while another notes "it was only when I found that both Anna Karenina
and Middlemarch
had failed to work their magic on me, this time around, that my diminished reaction took on a potential interest." James Joyce's Ulysses
fails to compel. The tone throughout is unrelievedly personal ("Antony and Cleopatra
was my favorite for a long time, and I still think it is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays"), which works well when the subject is close to home, as with Hitchcock's Vertigo, set in her home city: "My own ghost, in relation to this movie—my own Carlotta, if you will—is San Francisco.... Like Scotty, I am mourning a beloved who never really existed." Essays on John Milton, Henry Adams and George Orwell aim middle-to-low on the brow, sometimes with a dash of odd coyness: in a chapter on modern British novelist Ian McEwan, Lesser mentions a decade-old review she wrote of one of his books, stating, "I will spare you the entire review"—and then goes on to quote a page and a half of it. Potential readers would do well to stick to the prolific Lesser's fresher and more enthusiastic The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters.
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