Imaginative Reading

My reading life began early in childhood, with countless visits to our hometown library, the same library my mother frequented when she was growing up. I have no idea how many books I’ve read. I know others who have read more than I have, and who read more than I do, and who are better readers in terms of how much they can recall, and how well they can analyze and discuss their reading. This doesn’t mean I see myself as a bad reader; rather, I regard myself as an imaginative reader, a reader who experiences the printed word as I do the wind in the trees or a rushing stream. I am also a visual reader, sensitive to shapes and patterns on the page, and I find meaning and inspiration in white space as well as in the orderly rows of black letters themselves. I doubt I’m unusual in this regard. That I become the people I read about, I think also is fairly common, and is part of what I mean when I say I am an imaginative reader. That I go on being them after the books are done, is perhaps less usual. Hero or knave, I think I probably retain a bit, if not too much, of everyone I’ve read about, to the point that I sometimes have to stop and remind myself who I really am, though this need is also filled by members of my immediate family. At the same time, and equally important, I see myself as someone who bathes in language, and who yields to it, and is kept afloat in its waters as a tiny craft is borne by a salt sea. None of this means that I’m entirely unable to analyze, discuss, and recall what I’ve read; but there are times I wish I could do so more effectively. Maybe that effectiveness is manifested in other ways, though, in the observations I’m able to make, the understanding I’m able to offer, the writing I’m able to do, and maybe even in my penchant for exaggeration. I still read every day. I do no light reading, and eschew what is often called “brain candy.” I want substance; a challenge; I love writing that spans the centuries.

[ 1991 ]