Anne Fadiman Quote
The problem with being ravished by books at an early age is that later rereadings are often likely to disappoint. The sharp luscious flavor, the fine is fled, Hazlitt wrote, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. Terrible words, but it can happen. You become harder to move, frighten, arouse, provoke, jangle. Your education becomes an interrogation lamp under which the hapless book, its every wart and scar exposed, confesses its guilty secrets: My characters are wooden! My plot creaks! I am pre-feminist, pre-deconstructivist, and pre-postcolonialist! (The upside of English classes is that they give you critical tools, some of which are useful, but the downside is that those tools make you less able to shower your books with unconditional love. Conditions are the very thing you’re asked to learn.) You read too many books, and the currency of each one becomes debased.
The problem with being ravished by books at an early age is that later rereadings are often likely to disappoint. The sharp luscious flavor, the fine is fled, Hazlitt wrote, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. Terrible words, but it can happen. You become harder to move, frighten, arouse, provoke, jangle. Your education becomes an interrogation lamp under which the hapless book, its every wart and scar exposed, confesses its guilty secrets: My characters are wooden! My plot creaks! I am pre-feminist, pre-deconstructivist, and pre-postcolonialist! (The upside of English classes is that they give you critical tools, some of which are useful, but the downside is that those tools make you less able to shower your books with unconditional love. Conditions are the very thing you’re asked to learn.) You read too many books, and the currency of each one becomes debased.
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