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Seventeen writers revisit books they love
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
September 2005
272 pages ISBN: 0374249423 Hardcover
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Fiction
Is a book the same book-or a reader the same reader-the
second time around? The seventeen authors in this witty and
poignant collection of essays all agree on the answer:
Never. The editor of Rereadings is Anne Fadiman, and readers of
her bestselling book Ex Libris (FSG, 1998) will find this
volume especially satisfying. Her chosen authors include
Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia
Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante; the objects of their
literary affections range from Pride and Prejudice to Sue
Barton, Student Nurse. Each has selected a book or a story
or a poem--or even, in one case, the lyrics on the back of
the Sgt. Pepper album--that made a deep impression in his
or her youth, and reread it to see how it has changed in
the interim. (Of course, what has really changed is the
reader.) These essays are not conventional literary criticism; they
are about relationships. The relationship between reader
and book is a powerful one, and as these writers attest, it
evolves over time. Rereadings reveals at least as much
about the reader as about the book: each is a miniature
memoir that focuses on that most interesting of topics, the
protean nature of love. And as every bibliophile knows, no
love is more life-changing than the love of a book.
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