ABSTRACT
Every form of reading implies a mode of being in the world. Every theory of reading assumes something about human nature. Any way of reading is valuable not for what it reveals about books but to the extent that it connects us to the world.
We don’t experience reading as just a medium of communication between separated minds. Reading feels more intimate than that. When we read, the words become animate. We grasp them instantly. They strike our mind as a single, recognizable image, not as an assemblage of letters that we must first synthesize into a word and then define according to some dictionary we carry in our head. We enter a flow state. We savor every nuance of what happens on the page. The text acquires multiple dimensions. We see the logic of the argument, the rhetorical devices, the rhythm of the sentences, the ambiguities and multiple meanings, the emotional import, and so on. As a result, we develop intimacy with the book. Our mind floats above the linguistic matrix, entwined with the text like embracing lovers.
